Shopping Centers: Generic, Sprawling, and Becoming Obsolete?

Think back to your hometown’s historic district.  You might not have lived there, but you might have visited the post office or antique shop.  What types of buildings did it have?  Odds are they were the styles now romanticized in the concept of Main Street America:  two or three stories tall, with tall windows and recessed entryways, perhaps a wide sidewalk or American flag out front.  They had their similarities, sure, but they were all unique in their own way.  This architecture once populated cities and towns across America.

Now consider where you actually grew up, outside those historic districts, and where you probably live now.  Do those types of buildings exist today?  Of course not.  Instead of distinctive buildings that still lend special sense of place and funky feel to old towns today, today we have shopping centers and strip malls.  One of the most obvious products of the suburban sprawl that has dominated American development since the 1950s has been the generic buildings that now populate the outer fringes of communities from Los Angeles to Dillwyn, Va. 

Much of this growth has been driven by the explosion of the automobile.  Instead of being built to a pedestrian scale, much of the suburbs are now built for the car.  On a vibrant city sidewalk, you might be four or five people across walking; on a busy road, you often are four or five cars across.  The pattern of wide roads and high speeds has maintained this scale but with consequences not only for pedestrians and architectural variety, but also for the economy.

Christopher Leinberger at the University of Michigan has written about how our current stock of building types influenced the rise of the recent recession.  As a result of massive increases in home value and demand created by the housing boom, developers built speculation housing across the country and commercial developments to serve them.  Many of these developments were built as cheaply as possible, with an eye toward best serving the public driving on nearby roads.  The recession has decimated the value and attractiveness of these commercial developments.  Leinberger attributes this trend to the growing appeal urban and/or mixed-use areas have, often at suburbia’s expense.  We simply overbuilt our demand.

How can we remedy this situation?  How can we get to a point where we’re not as reliant on the shopping center?  One solution is by building taller.  This has happened thanks to the invisible hand of the free market in places like Tyson’s Corner outside Washington or the Perimeter area outside Atlanta.  A concerted effort by officials and developers across the country, however, especially in urban and suburban areas, can help bring denser environments that not only are more distinctive but also encourage more demand and use of transit services.  These forms of transportation can help clean our air and lessen auto congestion.  In small towns, we can encourage those businesses to move into historic areas and help breathe lives into the declining centers of towns.

Given the current economic climate, we have the opportunity to change the ways we focus our land use patterns.  We can start changing the conversation and focus on development town centers and other nodes that actively serve pedestrians and bikers in addition to drivers, places that focus on streets and buildings and not parking lots.  With the right steps, we can help make the suburban shopping center as obsolete as 1970s skyscrapers look today.

Guest Contributor: Will Feeney

 

 

 

Comments

[Erica]

I was initially drawn to this blog post because I am from Northern Virginia and am often annoyed by the myriad of shopping centers and town centers that exist around my neighborhood. I really detest that I have no choice but to drive my car around to get anywhere and that everything is a mass-produced chain with few, if any, locally owned establishments. Will’s first sentence prompting me to “think back to your hometown’s historic district,” led me to scoff under my breath because there isn't anything close to resembling a historic district in my hometown. The closest historic area is thirty minutes (twenty minutes without traffic, not that that ever happens) from my house in Old Town Fairfax. Even Old Town Fairfax is bordered by shopping centers and contains stores like Subway and Starbucks. Very authentic.
I could relate to Will’s claim that the recent recession is in part due to the construction of commercial developments to meet the ever rising demand for living in the suburbs. Driving and riding around Northern Virginia over the past years, I have witnessed the continued construction of housing developments around these shopping centers and along major roads and highways. I am amazed at the number of homes they can fit in such small areas in such little time. I am not surprised to read that these developments are actually poorly constructed and demand for them has decreased. What I didn’t agree about in Will’s post, is the claim that building taller is the solution.
He cites Tysons Corner as a successful example of this. I can say from personal experience and familiarity with the area that this is not the case. Despite having many tall buildings, Tysons Corner is one of the most crowded and congested areas in Northern Virginia. There is no shortage of people driving and because there is such a visible presence of the automobile, few people find it safe to walk. I do think that the construction taller buildings can be successful in some more urban communities, bit I cannot imagine this trend taking place in suburban areas.
As we create new developments and shopping centers, I agree that denser and taller infrastructures can be successfully utilized. It is possible that they can encourage less driving, a greater sense of community, and even healthier communities. However, as we heard in the mixed-use group’s presentation to our class, existing developments like these have not been around long enough to prove that any of these predictions would actually occur. Similarly, research that does exist is contradicting and inconclusive. I believe that more time and research needs to be given to existing dense and mixed-use developments before it is deemed to solution to shopping centers and sprawling communities that rely on them.

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[Stephanie Langton]

The idea of suburban ‘placelessness’ and how suburban landscapes are set in opposition to urban environments really interests me. I am especially interested in the decline of first-tier suburbs, or inner-ring suburbs. These areas seem to be defined both using the timing of their development as well as their geographic location. These are the earlier suburbs, which are close in proximity to the downtown or central city, which developed before the extreme suburban expansion in the mid- to- late twentieth century. Current literature explains that these suburbs are beginning to show signs of problems similar to those in central cities. There is disinvestment in these areas, a population decline and old building stock.
Smart growth policies are starting to consider the role of these suburbs in determining new growth patterns. Growth boundaries are focusing new growth in these areas as a way of slowing and containing suburban sprawl. The infrastructure exists; they are usually not far from the city, they could provide transit opportunities. I know there are several nonprofit organizations that have been created to address issues in these inner-ring suburbs. The First Suburbs Consortium is a group for suburbs around Cleveland, Ohio that works to promote residential and economic vitality in these areas. Further research on the type of work these organizations do and how it influences growth patterns would be interesting. Is urbanizing the area, growing taller and denser, the primary focus? Or is economic and community development the priority? Will these once suburban areas become physically urbanized? If not, what public spaces can be created to promote the social vitality that is sought after?
This brings me to my second point. The emphasis in this post is on the built environment. I think it is important that we do not dismiss suburbs as nonplaces. What I mean by this is that there can be no formal understanding of a non-entity. And the sometimes bland suburban landscapes are easily dismissed as lacking a sense of community (in the traditional sense). I am reminded of Rehema’s post entitled “ Community Space, Community Activism: Lessons Learned from Sesame Street.” This post on Sesame Street highlights the value of having a physical space that provides the setting for frequent and informal interactions among residents. In the case of Sesame Street, it’s a mixed use city street. In the case of the Union Project Rehema describes it’s a church and its surroundings. My question is what about the places that aren’t in an urban setting? How have communities adapted to the physical environment that emphasizes the car instead of the pedestrian?
As we have learned in the final presentations for the class, generation Y and baby-boomers prefer urban environments. Generation Y seems to be on a path where settlement in a suburban neighborhoods will come later. But suburbs are still a significant part of the American landscape. How do we address the issue of community space and involvement in areas that aren’t and will not urbanize?