
The New York Times takes a visit to Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn, a half-mile outdoor strip that can be characterized as an outdoor mall. The Fulton Street Mall comes pretty close to what the contemporary Lifestyle Center aims to be, though you would be hard pressed to find black Santa's and flier guys with teardrop tattoos in the corner of their eyes at any Lifestyle Center.
It'll be interesting to see how Fulton Street changes in the coming years - it currently balances a few name-brand retailers with a host of mom & pops, but with the changing demographics of Brooklyn it shouldn't be long before the Banana Republics and H&M's that litter New York's other outdoor mall (Soho) make their way across the East River. And in a city that is continually evolving, maybe that's not a bad thing. I certainly wouldn't mind a Duane Reade popping up somewhere near in our Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Maybe one-stop shopping is in our blood.

New York (we can even isolate Brooklyn in this case) is full of shopping strip typologies. The Atlantic Terminal Mall is of the enclosed, multi-level model. The Fulton Street Mall takes care of the outdoor strip (steps taken in the '70s such as sidewalk widening and limiting vehicular traffic (control mechanisms) formalized the strip as a mall). And sections of Brooklyn thoroughfares are packed with small, local stores serving their immediate neighborhood & demographic. Fundamentally they are all very much the same, and at the same time very different. The organization and control of space helps to define each type. The larger and more complex the type requires greater control (levels of security) which ultimately define how sanitized a place becomes. For better or worse...
Step Right Up! Brooklyn Mall Is Oasis and Anomaly [NY Times]
top image by Richard Perry