| |||
|
Arts & Entertainment Books Comics Health & Body  MediaMothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Media stories, go to the
Media home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Columnists - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Media Media Media Media Alt Media - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
The malling of America
- - - - - - - - - - - -
August 13, 1999 |
Yet, for all its modern trappings, Arizona Mills reflects an outdated school of urban planning. There's no need to create insulated, faux universes -- unless, of course, it's 104 degrees outside. Minimalls are sprouting up everywhere. One day you're driving by Auntie May's antiques and oddities store and the next -- kerplunk -- an Old Navy-Starbucks-Jamba Juice-Target has landed in its place. Auntie May is in her brand-new Porsche doing donuts on the front lawn of her glam Palm Springs retirement home. What does this mean for the rest of us? Several recent articles seek to answer this very question. - - - - - - - - - - - - The Stranger, Aug. 12-18 "Welcome to the Great Mall of Seattle" by Eric Frederickson Eric Frederickson looks at recent commercial development in low-income Seattle neighborhoods and develops a larger thesis on current trends in urban planning. He decries "the replacement of town squares by malls as the primary gathering places for citizens," but struggles with the fact that economically deprived regions are being revitalized by the creation of these outdoor shopping destinations. He calls the proliferation of cookie-cutter storefronts "postmodern Potemkin villages" that hide not poverty, but malls. Frederickson's discussion of private security guards taking over public streets is chilling, and his analysis of the "disposable architecture" of commerce is the best I've read in a general interest forum. - - - - - - - - - - - - The Memphis Flyer, Aug. 5-11 "Strip Commercial" by Jim Hanas Jim Hanas grounds the debate over new mall construction in Memphis in historical context. What do the malls built in the 1950s and '60s mean to the neighborhoods they are part of now? "The all-but-abandoned commercial strips ... reveal their age in ways other than vacancy and disrepair. Their storefronts sit right on the sidewalk, dating them to a time when bus lines, rather than highways, fueled the eastward suburbanizing drive," he writes. (In his Stranger article, Frederickson points to a return of sidewalk malls, but he's addressing trends in a far more cosmopolitan region.) Hanas points out many of the same issues Frederickson does, such as community activities being increasingly focused on commercial centers. His descriptions of urban ghost towns makes you imagine what Arizona Mills will look like 40 years from now. Not a pleasant thought. - - - - - - - - - - - - Village Voice, Aug. 11-17 "B is for Bistro" by Norah Vincent Perhaps the finest, most balanced take on gentrification I've seen yet. Norah Vincent understands that "finding the balance between the squalor that used to be Avenue B and the circus that is now Avenue A won't be easy." Even so, she rightly denounces the wiping out of blue-collar housing and multicultural community centers, although her characterizations of so-called yuppies are as tiresome as any class-based slur. She longs for the return of bohemian culture -- like that of the beatniks -- to the area, in addition to a good racial mix, yet who does she think brought cappuccino to the 'hood in the first place? - - - - - - - - - - - - Metro Times Detroit, Aug. 11-17 "Outsides In" by Jerry Heron The Natural Wonders store, which sells souvenirs that remind you of nature -- like little globe key chains, stuffed toy hummingbirds or fossils -- is coming to a mall near you. Jerry Heron discusses the disturbing irony in the popularity of this Nature Company knock-off as well as cammo-and-ammo stores like Bass Pro, which thrive where forest once stood. Heron evokes Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg in his humorous lament. I found myself uncontrollably humming a certain Talking Heads song.
| ||
 |
 |
 |
 |
Next page |