Longitudinal Slum

Retail Living

A LA Times visit to The Americana at Brand.

The new Mayberry? [LA Times]
image by Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times

Suburban Change

The Atlantic looks at the continued fallout of the subprime mess and its relation to larger shifts in attitudes toward dense urban areas and surrounding suburban areas. As the number of foreclosed homes sit empty in neighborhoods increase, so has activity commonly associated with urban centers such as graffiti, gangs, and even the stripping of empty properties of precious metals such as copper. It could be argued that the suburb has finally arrived - the oldest of the suburbs have reached an age where homes will have seen multi-generations and the transfer of ownership through a handful of families. As older city neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side have seen its demographic shift from Jewish, to Puerto Rican, to gentrifying transplants from the Midwest, the suburbs are reaching an age where radical shifts in demographics and character will become part of the arc of the life of a suburb.

This is a promising change from two fronts. First, the model of the suburb and suburban living is cautiously being reexamined under the guise of New Urbanism. New Urbanist communities have begun to support denser developments with an emphasis on public transportation or walkable living. Lifestyle Centers mimic the stylings of traditional Main Street, while beginning to mix retail, commercial and housing in the same development. While neither approach is perfect, and wreak of stylistic falsities more appropriate of a Disneyworld amusement center, they demonstrate the possibilities in rethinking how suburban development is approached, as opposed to a complete abandonment or disregard / distaste for the suburbs, as practiced by close-minded city dwellers who believe the revitalization of the inner city is the only honorable direction for us to take moving forward.

And second, older suburban developments and retail strips have the potential to be re-examined, as many are falling into disrepair and in need of infrastructural improvements. The opportunity exists to think about how infill projects are approached, how existing lots can be made denser, and whether larger McMansions can be subdivided into multi-tenant homes, in much the same way older brownstones or row-houses have been in neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Rather than viewing the forthcoming change approaching the suburbs in a negative light (ie: death of the suburbs), the weakening of the rigid idea of what the suburbs ought to be and what they represent should be seen as an opportunity to examine the best and worst of the suburbs, and learn how they are to be recalibrated moving forward.

The Next Slum? [The Atlantic]

Omaha By Design Lists Great Public Spaces

Omaha by Design has listed 10 Great Public Spaces in Omaha. Naturally the intersection of 11th & Howard is listed as Number 1. Only the southwest corner of 50th & Underwood makes it in Dundee. The other three corners of this intersection must constitute bad public space.

Missing from the list is Village Pointe. Disappointing because a new Lifestyle Center should be a shoo-in for a list like this. However one of Omaha's older shopping centers, Countryside Village, did make the list.

Inaugural List of 10 Great Public Spaces Announced [Omaha by Design]

Village Pointe Lifestyle Center: Day Two

Trying to keep it real in Omaha. Grabbing the free wifi at Scooter's Coffeehouse at Village Pointe, Omaha NE's premiere urban destination. In the afternoon, during the week, the demographic is primarily seniors, and Omaha Woman, young to middle-aged woman who don't appear to have jobs, and come in to this quaint village to do some shopping. High-end shopping. Like Chico's. Everybody strolls in slow motion, as nobody is in a rush to get anywhere. Strolling also allows one to be noticed, display their bling, and stare down others with suspicion. They are Walter Benjamin's flaneur, for the 21st century. I suspect the activity picks up in the evening. There is evidence in the form of a posting at an information kiosk stating that minors are not allowed on the premises past 9pm, unless they are under the supervision of an adult. Any minors caught un-accompanied past 9pm will be escorted to one end of the development where they must be picked up by their parents. It's important to control image here. I can imagine packs of horny teenagers disrupting the Village Pointe night life - Funny Bone Comedy Club and Cheeseburger in Paradise. Maybe on skateboards. Skateboarding is a crime.

There is further evidence that control is slowly unraveling here. The new Apple Store, a quaint one-story affair, imposes it's unrelentless modern facade on the carefully crafted architectural 'language' of Village Pointe. The Village Pointe style, similiar to most Lifestyle Centers, is post-modern. A thoughtful blend of PoMo styles and componentry define the small-town feel of the development, mixed up just enough for it to appear as it evolved over time, at the hands of several different architects. The Apple Store obliterates that perception like a tumor, even though it is the only storefront that authentically abides by the mis-construed design vision. It is the only urban retailer on the Village Pointe tenant list, and is the only storefront that contributes to the eclecticism found in true urban centers. However, even the metal panels of the Apple facade are framed by a few feet of stone on either side, clearly an attempt by the Village Pointe design committee to contextualize the Apple tumor into the larger pallate. As a result the Apple box appears applied to a stone facade that 'should' be there instead. The message is clear that the Apple aesthetic doesn't belong here - that it is an anomaly - and it is only tolerated because it is an attractive tenant.

Despite all this, Village Pointe doesn't feel like a successful Lifestyle Center. Missing is an infusion of anything that hints of 'mixed-use', the common buzz-phrase / ingrediant for successful urban development, real or faux. Sophisticated Lifestyle Centers include commercial office space and even rental apartments and condos. Programmatic elements with some purpose. Even a corner deli would help, a place to purchase facial tissue, fruit, or refreshments. But it's clear there is a short-minded and limited idea about what this Lifestyle Center could be. At either end of the Main Street, the Code of Conduct is clearly posted. Anything that begins to approach a deviation from the activity of shopping is prohibited; the list ranges from disruptive language and clothing, to sitting the wrong way and standing idle. Regardless of the intense effort to portray and mimic the late 19th / early 20th century street scene, the frozen space of the late 20th century enclosed shopping mall (Victor Gruen) is still the intended model for this Lifestyle Center.

Village Pointe Lifestyle Center [Flickr Set]

The Lifestyle Centers of Southern California

The LA Times features a shift in shopping mall culture in Southern California, part of an international trend, where closed and fortified shopping complexes are being opened up (though still closed from their surroundings) and mimic traditional small town street patterning. Of course this is the Lifestyle Center, which we've covered elsewhere, though in Southern California, whose culture is intrinsically linked to the shopping mall, the changes go beyond the formal organization or styling of the mall:

Mall developers must make the revamped centers conjure up nostalgia for shoppers who might have had their first date at the mall, or spent their first hard-earned dollar there, while they stay on the cutting edge of American retail tastes, said Paco Underhill, a self-described "retail anthropologist" and the author of "Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping." "There's a generation of Americans out there who have disposable income but don't need anything. Therefore, providing them with something that gives them nostalgia … that's important," Underhill said.

Developer Rick Caruso, who is responsible for several lifestyle centers in Southern California, shuns the term 'lifestyle center', instead preferring to describe these developments as streets that follow a story line: "They are more akin to streets than anything else. That's what we try to pattern them after. We write stories. We have story lines of all of the projects."

The trend toward enhancing the shopping experience can be seen in other countries such as South Africa or Japan, where more ambitious programs are being pursued:

In South Africa, developers are adding sports complexes for local schools near food courts and drive-in movie theaters on parking lot roofs. In Japan and Israel, theaters are stitching the movie complex into the larger shopping culture, tracking consumers closely so giveaways and coupons offer a carefully crafted premium that will keep them in the mall longer.

Locally, Caruso's Americana at Brand, will be a mixed-use development featuring 475,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, including 100 luxury condominiums and 238 apartment homes.

Many well-intentioned critics, architects, and so-called urbanists will immediately dismiss or deride the evolution of the Lifestyle Center / Shopping Mall as a tool in the New Urbanist conspiracy, an attack on 'authenticity', or akin to the Disneyification of our cities. However, the Lifestyle Center may be the closest and most successful replacement for the 19th and 20th century 'city' or town center or Main Street that the 21st century has to offer. Through adding a wider range of programmatic activity and offering a residential component, these developments may be paving the way for an alternative to the gentrification or re-styling of failed 19th and 20th century urban centers championed by the above mentioned critics and architects.

Super-sized malls raise concerns [LA Times]
image by Myung J. Chun / LAT