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

Fulton Street Mall Keepin' It Real

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

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]

9 Hours Trapped In Chicago

I've always been dumbfounded by stranded passengers in airports. You usually hear about them during the holidays when they are trapped in airports for hours on end, sleeping on floors like refugees and complaining to television news crews about their plight - oblivious to the fact that when you travel during the winter you're likely to be screwed. So when I was stranded in Chicago for 9 hours yesterday, en route to Omaha, I tried my best to understand that there are circumstances beyond the control of the airlines and airports (though it is amazing how a few delays and cancelled flights can send ripple waves through the entire country).

My biggest mistake was not packing required power and adapters and chargers for electronic equipment, ie: laptops and cell phone. Instead I was forced to study most of the day for my last remained ARE exams, which was likely a better use of my time.

The remainder of my time was spent trying to embrace the airport / shopping mall hybrid typology, which was relatively un-impressive, consisting primarily of generic bookstores selling generic books, generic electronic / music stores selling generic music and media, and the same retail food chains found in any strip mall. The airport as a city is a stretch of the imagination.

The most annoying part of the experience was the continual buzz of bad and tacky ring tones, stranded passengers talking loudly on their cell phones about nothing, and the continual and irrational complaining of those with less travel experience - who believed American Airlines was out to individually screw each one of them, as though the airline had a vendetta against them and were feeding them lies one after the other.

Despite all of this I made it to Omaha, and am now sitting in it's urban city center - the Village Pointe Lifestyle Center on the western fringe of the city, enjoying free wifi in an empty coffee shop watching seniors and unemployed housewives putter around with nothing to do.

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