Santana Row, San Jose, CA

Santana Row is the closest San Jose comes to a European shopping street, and living here means living on top of it. Federal Realty built the roughly 42-acre mixed-use district on the site of an aging 1960s shopping center, and its debut was dramatic: a huge eight-alarm fire tore through the largest building about a month before opening in August 2002, yet the project still opened that November. Homes on the Row are nearly all condos and rental apartments in mid-rise buildings over ground-floor retail, designed as a set and professionally maintained. There are no yards. Outdoor space means a balcony, one of the small plazas between buildings, or a drive to a proper park. Dinner is the main event. Fitoor gets the most attention for inventive Indian plates such as poriyal-topped soft-shell crab, and for cocktails built around black garlic or manchego. Straits handles pan-Asian cooking, and Fogo de Chao covers the Brazilian steakhouse end of things. Cocola Bakery is the morning pastry stop. For serious coffee, Coffee & Water Lab is a short drive out Saratoga Avenue, roasting its own single-origin beans and brewing them with water mixed for the job. Westfield Valley Fair sits right across Stevens Creek Boulevard, anchored by Macy's, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, with Eataly and Din Tai Fung among its places to eat. Between the two, a lot of errands happen on foot, and Sarah Winchester's sprawling Victorian, the Winchester Mystery House, is a short walk south on Winchester Boulevard. The crowds that fill the restaurants also fill the garages. Weekend evenings bring traffic on Stevens Creek, competition for parking and sidewalk noise that a suburban street never hears, so quiet is something you find behind your own windows. The honest tradeoffs are the premium prices, the crowds and parking pressure that come with a destination-retail district, and the near-total absence of a quiet residential feel. But for buyers who want walkable, upscale, low-maintenance living with the best shopping in the South Bay downstairs, nothing else in San Jose is quite like Santana Row.