Living above my shop

By: J. David Chapman/January 26, 2023

My wife and I live in the downtown core of a suburban city. I call it subURBAN living. It has the safety, quality schools, and nice parks often associated with the suburbs, but has the urban fabric with a walkable/bikeable environment and all the amenities connected with an urban location.

I always wanted to live above a retail shop, maybe a coffee shop, bookstore, deli, or pub. In fact, I still think it would be neat to live above my real estate office on Main Street in an urban setting. I was called to a brainstorming session on a recent Saturday morning. The topic was the feasibility of a live/work project in an urban location. It made me consider the way people live today, the way we lived in the past, and how we might choose to live in the future.

For centuries, it was common for people to live and work in the same place. The Industrial Revolution was the catalyst that made this lifestyle less desirable. As people left work at family shops and took jobs at factories, the split between work and private life started to become more evident. In fact, the separation of work and home became an indication of success and wealth. Living above the shop where you worked became associated with those who were recent arrivals to the country and became typical in immigrant neighborhoods in large cities.

Even today, in the east side of London and in a few neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan, you will find what we now call residential-over-retail, where small local merchants live in accommodations above their shops. The question we contemplated on Saturday morning over coffee and tea, was, whether there is a market for the return of what we now term as a live/work model. I tell my students a great reason for studying history is to prepare for its return. It seems to me the past might be the best place to find ideas for fashion, architecture, and the way we live.

I respect the entrepreneurial spirit of those who start businesses in their garage or back bedroom of their home and suspect there is enough demand to incorporate this into the design and development of a community in the urban core that would accommodate the ability to once again live where we work.

J. David Chapman is a professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).