After the mall: retrofitting suburbia
As it once sucked the life out of Main Street, the suburban mall is being reconsidered – or torn down – as towns move back to the concept of a multiuse town center.
Popularity: 28% [?]
urbanism.org
Urban news [almost] daily.Archive for Big Box
Dead malls
Today, nearly 20 percent of the 2,000 largest malls in the United States are failing, according to an interview in Newsweek with Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,” a collection of case studies of suburban property redevelopments and the director of the architecture program at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Popularity: 40% [?]
The Last Shopping Mall? New Jersey Awaits Xanadu
It rises out of the tidal murk of the Meadowlands — the polluted northern–New Jersey wetlands on which the sports complex of the same name was built some 33 years ago — like a garish species from a monster movie. What is that swamp thing? It’s a mishmash of big-box structures covered in aqua, blue and white tiles, with a little mustard yellow and brown thrown in to finish off the 1970s-nightmare look. Part of the complex, still under construction, is shaped like a ski jump, because what says industrial metropolitan America quite like a Nordic sport?
Popularity: 28% [?]
Retrofitting Suburbia
Architects Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson confront the challenge of redeveloping abandoned suburban retail space in their new book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Wiley Press, 2009). The detailed text also explores several creative solutions in which progressive planning has reinvigorated suburban communities nationwide. PM spoke to Dunham-Jones about the challenge of replacing dying malls and the culture of the car with pedestrian-centered residential and retail development.
Popularity: 33% [?]
Can Retail Be Reinvented?
The recession is bad news for retail developers, and a recent gathering of them was rife with concern about the field and its future. But amid the uncertainty is an air of hope — and an understanding that to survive, the face of retail development must adapt.
Popularity: 38% [?]
Our Love Affair With Malls Is on the Rocks
DEARLY beloved.
We are gathered here today, in the midst of economic calamity, to ask if we really should be gathered here today, in a funhouse of merchandise designed to send us deeper into debt.
Specifically, we are gathered in the Chapel of Love, sandwiched between a LensCrafters and a Bloomingdale’s and tucked into a relatively quiet corner of the vast prairie of retail and amusements that is the Mall of America.
Popularity: 28% [?]
What Will Save the Suburbs?
For a long time now I’ve been obsessed with suburban and exurban master-planned communities and how to make them better. But as the economy and the mortgage crisis just seem to get worse, and gas prices continue to plunge, the issues around housing have changed dramatically. The problem now isn’t really how to better design homes and communities, but rather what are we going to do with all the homes and communities we’re left with.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Cuba and the Invasion of the Big-Box Stores
President-elect Barack Obama is reportedly considering a new American relationship with Cuba. That’s long-overdue good news. But the new administration should consider this cautionary note: “An invasion of one Madonna is equal to ten Marine divisions,” according to Miguel Coyula, a noted city planner in Havana.
Popularity: 13% [?]