From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America (original) (raw)
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Mallville : mixing uses in the shopping center of the future
2004
Changes in consumer preference, supply and public policy are producing momentum for the introduction of new real estate products into suburbia, calling into question the homogeneous propagation of entrenched forms. Suburbs need to be viewed as what they are in some places: underutilized real estate, underbuilt or emerging neighborhoods-ripe for future morphological alterations and untapped economic opportunities. Capitalizing on the potential to improve underutilized land, public willingness to create a sense of place in the suburbs, and the market demand for lifestyle centers and urban housing, developers have created a new product type that recreates the main street feel of a city-in short "Mallville." These mixed-use products have the potential to achieve returns and product differentiation for developers and property owners in an increasingly competitive retail sector, while simultaneously providing municipalities with social benefit. The point of this thesis is not to...
Planning Perspectives, 2019
Pedestrianization was an established concept among modernist architects and planners long before the first post-war pedestrian malls were built in North American downtowns. Post-war pedestrian-oriented suburban shopping malls, such as Northland near Detroit, MI and Northgate in Seattle, WA, linked retail success to the pedestrian shopping experience. This propelled the existing but then-untested assumption that planning downtowns to mimic suburban shopping centres by pedestrianizing main streets would revitalize downtown retail districts. Despite the modern origins of the pedestrianization concept, the rhetorical cues of post-war architects and planners in North America mask its modern roots and employ nostalgic imagery of preindustrial European urbanism, implying European origin of the concept. Although imagery of European charm became a means of packaging modernist ideas of pedestrianization, the design proposals rarely referenced or replicated actual European precedents. Furthermore, while much research implies a linear transfer of pedestrianization ideas from Europe to North America, professionals in Europe also looked to North American shopping malls and pedestrian streets for guidance in addressing their own challenges with accommodating automobiles in downtowns.
Looking for the mall: public life in the city of dispersal
ISUF 2013 | Urban Form at the Edge, 2016
When people are asked to describe the city where they live, especially in Europe, they will probably answer referring to the old centre or to the downtown area. Often they are able to describe the network of public spaces and to give information on how to reach on foot shops or public facilities, searching buildings, churches, squares, paths and facades in their own mental map, flipping through the urban-ness of the old city (Sieverts, 2003). However if they are asked where they spend their leisure time on a typical day, most of them will probably answer referring to shopping malls in the suburbs, which are related to major roads and infrastructures. In the Italian fragmented landscape of outskirts, urban form is marked by big box retail stores as masses and automobile connections as voids. During past decades, malls have progressively changed to best accommodate consumers' needs: they strongly enlarged their structure introducing a variety of services and entertainments, such as movies and restaurants, fast-food arcades, libraries and other recreational activities, together with office developments, thus becoming attractive community centres. This paper will investigate how Italian suburbs have deeply changed due to large luxury shopping malls, in terms of urban typology and patterns but mainly in terms of mobility and public life. In Europe, public spaces, intended as a network of structured sequences in a dense and compact urban scenario, are mostly linked to timeless and beautiful historic cities. Monumental buildings, churches, market places, squares, pedestrian promenades and facades appear to be the main characteristics of the built environment, intended as urban elements that are open to members of " the public " , in a topographical approach (Iveson, 2012). In opposition to a deep knowledge and an endless interest in the myth of the old, compact, mixed-use city, suburbs, namely that very large area outside the historical perimeter, have been considered for a long time by scholars as a negative consequence of the application of the modern principles expressed by Congrès International d' Architecture Moderne (CIAM) (Hall, 1974; Fishman, 1990; Duany, 2000) referring to the four functions of 20th century life, such as dwelling, work, recreation and circulation (Charte d' Athènes, 1933). Suburban design served the basic need to accommodate new residents with little consideration of the implications of creating an extension of the existing core or a new, independent urban centre. Mostly inhabited by bedroom communities, such as large housing estates and suburban satellite housing, dependent on the old city for employment, shopping and entertainment (Fishman, 1987), suburbs were marked with a fragmented and dispersed urban design, often empty of morphologically defined public spaces. The American critic and urbanist Lewis Mumford believed CIAM's four functions missed the city's most necessary 'fifth function': space for civic life, like the agora, forum or piazza (Mumford, 2000; Costanzo, 2016). These spaces were mostly conceived as a void between buildings filled with plenty of green space. Especially in Europe and Italy, city managers and politicians were accused by scholars of rejecting the successful model of the old city: suburbs, in their morphological settings, based on the separation of functions on the basis of zoning were completely detached from the historical language.
Supplementary material - From suburb to shopping centre: seventeenth to twenty-first century
2020
Aerial view of Grand Arcade, facing northwest, with outlines of areas of investigation and various features shown. Compare to fig. 1.11E (photograph courtesy of Bovis Lend Lease Ltd.). On the back cover: View of the excavation of the main area at Grand Arcade, facing west. Edited for the Institute by James Barrett (Series Editor). v Contents Contributors ix Figures xi Tables xv Chapter 1 Introduction (C. Cessford and A. Dickens) S1 Previous archaeological investigations S1 Tenement narratives, a partial critique S4 Chapter 2 Preludes: prehistoric to early twelfth century (C. Cessford) S5 Geology and topography S5 Soils of Cambridge and its immediate environs: insights from CAU excavations S5 Prehistoric material S7 Roman material S8 Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon material S9 Late Saxon activity S9 The Hadstock Way S10 Features associated with the mid to late eleventh-century dispersed occupation S10 Features associated with the early twelfth-century large-scale imposed layout S12 Other twelfth-century ditches S13 Chapter 3 The Kings Ditch: from Anarchy to alleyway (C. Cessford) S17 Previous investigations S17 The 2005-6 excavations S18 Phase 4: late eighteenth-early twenty-first century S19 Chapter 4 The early suburb: mid-twelfth to sixteenth century (C. Cessford) S27 Archaeological remains: mid-late twelfth century S27 Archaeological remains: thirteenth-fourteenth centuries S33 Archaeological remains: fifteenth-sixteenth centuries S45 Material culture S62 Economic and environmental data S68 Chapter 5 From suburb to shopping centre: seventeenth to twenty-first century (C. Cessford and A. Dickens) S147 Tenement naratives: seventeenth century S147 Tenement narratives: eighteenth century S153 Tenement narratives: nineteenth century S163 Tenement narratives: twentieth century S190 Tenement narratives: the Robert Sayle department store S193 Material culture S200 Economic and environmental data S213 Chapter 6 Wider environs (R. Newman) S535 The Christ's Land development S535
Revitalize Urban Fabric with Contemporary Public Spaces; on the Topic of Shopping Spaces
A+ArchDesign , 2018
Public spaces like shopping areas are indispensable places for human. The buying and selling of goods played a very important role in the development of towns and cities (1). Shopping places has been changed with modern movement. At the same time, these spaces embrace particular events that have collective social, historical and cultural associations; projections of these events influence the physical transformations, which can each be re-identified through time. One of the basic features of traditional shopping areas is the association between urban fabric and social structure (2). However, contemporary shopping places has been emerged as closed box independent from tissue of city which lost their spatial values. Therefore, especially in historical cities, the unity of 'urban fabric-shopping place' is impaired. The "space-time" relation in modernity shifts because of breaking ties of societies with the traditions and is leading to the loss of identity (3). This study discusses the space design of contemporary shopping areas as important public city places and the interpretation of traditional impression in today's modern architecture to refer to values of place. With this aim, "Mediacite" shopping center in Belgium designed by Ron Arad and eastern covered bazaar will be examined as case study. The "Mediacite" was created in the context of modern design criteria, although the architect has revived the sense of traditional design principles in the place. This project ties together all the disparate elements of its site to create a new axis through the city of Liege (4).
2017
Shopping malls have emerged in the Western world, starting from mid-1950s as a new architectural form that was constructed outside the city as a simulation of the city center, and in isolation from all the negative external aspects of the city, with their enclosed environments. Starting to integrate into the global economy in 1980s, cities set out to import the components of the global economy within the perspective of liberalism. The concept of the shopping mall, invented by the global economy as the new public space, was also imported to cities at 1980s. The import was carried out by copying the shopping mall concept, which is a simulation of the city center in the West. The new concept of shopping malls changed the understanding of spending leisure time, shopping and entertainment in cities, and made a big impact on the city and the citizens. Paving the road for a new and significant public space model in the minds of residents in cities, shopping malls became one of the signific...