I found this interview of Julia Christensen, Oberlin College professor and artist, on the The Infrastructurist about her book, Big Box Reuse. In it she describes communities around the country that have found productive ways of reusing abandoned big box stores that would have sat vacant while they rot away, pollute as they fall apart, and collect rats and other undesirable things.
Big Box of Trouble: Dealing with the Coming Plague of Empty Superstores
If you like that, I also came across this article on the Sustainable Industries website after recently having some lengthy discussions with friends about what to do with abandoned malls and big box stores. This article sums up the issue very nicely and provides a broad definition of a “lifestyle center” (basically a new term for a very, very old concept).
Dead Malls, by Charles Redell – 3.2.09
Here’s a short excerpt:
Only three enclosed shopping malls have been built in the United States since 2005; none were built in 2008 and only one is planned to open in 2009. A driving force in the decline of the American shopping mall as we know it is a realization that the model is not sustainable, either economically or environmentally. Centralized shopping is not about to disappear from the American landscape, however.
Malls built over the last few decades are being refurbished into so-called lifestyle centers, a term created by developers to describe what may be the world’s oldest location for retail commerce: an urban mixed-use community.
…..
“These projects are hybrids with urban streetscapes but suburban parking ratios,” [Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of “Retrofitting Suburbia,”] says. “They’re much more sustainable than what they displace, but not as much as an urban environment.”