retrofitting suburbia

We can draw a parallel to the USA, Ellen Dunham- Jones- Retrofitting Suburbia 2009, which illustrates this phenomena in the USA. If  you start with a totally artificial environment, the loss of the consumer means the death of the shopping mall is quick dramatic. They have experienced a greater decline in a much shorter space of time.

Many shopping malls in the USA have not evolved, they have simply been created on an economic whim, and are disappearing as easily and quickly as they are created. In the UK, towns center’s have a historical context, and are largely not as artificial as the shopping malls in the USA, but during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s some Shopping Centres have create an over supply in retail units in many towns, as a reaction to the perceived retail demand.

In the USA, Shopping Malls have survived in artificial environments, for car borne middle  Americans, and it has become apparent that when the customer doesn’t want to shop there anymore then the mall will die. They don’t provide a central place function, or conform to a central place or spatial theory. They are simply built on retail, not consumer demand.

Dunham-Jones, addresses their phenomenon, and feels that a solution, is simply to retro-fit the space with some new real estate. She agues that, “ there is no question that the worlds greatest cities exemplify incremental urbanism and that sensitive interventions that both respect the existing urban structure and advance evolving cultures over time contribute to great places”. She does fail to understand the historical context of a cities' function.