City v burb

Why don't suburbs have any mixed use developments? Kevin Drum figures it's because there are basically two types of people in this discussion: city folks and suburb folk. No one seems to want mixed use.

Interestingly, he points out that residential developments are money pits for governments, consuming far more resources than they bring in.

From the comments:

Kevin,

There's an article from the Washington Post a few years ago that describes why Federal Realty decided to stop building projects like Bethesda Row that have the urban feel you describe. The upshot? It's a systems problem.

From The Washington Post :

A bank can finance a suburban shopping mall and have a good sense for the risks involved; with a development like Bethesda Row, not only is the expense higher, but there are innumerable risks that bankers generally do not know how to quantify. "Real estate finance is a 'keep it simple, stupid' business," said John B. Levy, a Richmond-based real estate investment banker. "When you've got some apartments, some office and some retail all combined into a single project, you've got more moving parts, and that makes it geometrically more difficult to get financing. Three different property types isn't three times as difficult to finance as one type, it's nine times as difficult."