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TOPIC / MIXED-USE / 30 STORIES

Mixed-Use Development

Live, work, and play stacked into one project: how developers combine residential, retail, office, and hospitality, and why cities increasingly require it.

Mixed-use development stacks multiple uses, residential over retail, office beside hospitality, into a single project or master-planned district. Done well, it creates places that draw foot traffic all day and command rent premiums; done poorly, it multiplies the financing, leasing, and entitlement complexity of every use at once.

Cities increasingly push for it. Transit-oriented zoning, ground-floor retail requirements, and public-realm demands make mixed-use the default ask for large sites near transit, and the format is central to downtown revivals and suburban town-center projects alike. For developers, the trade is placemaking and density upside against a harder capital stack, since different uses carry different lenders, returns, and timelines.

This hub tracks major mixed-use projects, the master-planned districts reshaping metro cores, and the zoning and financing moves that make them work. Every figure traces to a primary source.

The developers on this beat

The firms our mixed-use development coverage names, most-covered first, with the number of stories naming each one.

BH Group3Related Group3Building Block Realty2Allen Morris Co.1Alta Developers1Apollo Companies1Baron Property Group1Black Equities1Bob Liu1Brightline1Bristol Myers Squibb1Brookfield Properties1

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Frequently asked

What counts as a mixed-use development?
A mixed-use development combines two or more distinct uses, such as apartments, retail, office, or hotel, in one building or an integrated site. The goal is a place that works across different times of day and shares infrastructure and parking. It ranges from a single tower with shops on the ground floor to a master-planned district blending housing, workplaces, and public space.
Why is mixed-use development harder to finance than a single-use project?
Each use has its own lenders, return expectations, lease structures, and delivery timeline, so a mixed-use capital stack often layers several financing sources that must be coordinated. Retail and hotel components carry different risk than residential, and phasing the uses adds complexity. The payoff is diversification and placemaking value, but the financing and entitlement work is heavier than a comparable single-use building.