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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2001
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NEW BOOK SEES FUTURE OF MALLS AS ‘MINICITIES’
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new book discusses the future of the mall as a ‘minicity.’
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The following is a book review of “Tomorrow’s Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and Lives,” by William L. Garrison and Jerry D. Ward. 316 pp. Boston, London: Artech House. $69
By Edmund Mander
Hotels are sometimes built into malls, as are movie theaters. Why not apartments, churches, schools and companies?
Malls would become huge “pedestrian-oriented minicities,” putting everything people routinely need within walking distance, according to a vision outlined in this book about transportation planning. Residents’ cars, which would no longer be needed for day-to-day trips, would be left on the periphery of the development for longer, out-of-town journeys.
“With our minicity, we create a large indoor urban enclave that is attractive and dynamic and can accommodate hotels, dwellings, schools, churches, businesses — the full gamut of urban necessities and amenities,” according to William L. Garrison and Jerry D. Ward, in their book, “Tomorrow’s Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and Lives.’’
Transportation has shaped the physical and social environment, the authors note, and it would be integral to their vision of a self-contained community for living, working and shopping. Both authors have considerable experience in the transportation field. Garrison is professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, and a past director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at Berkeley. Ward, before he retired, served as director of research and development policy in the U.S. Department of Transportation, and was a visiting senior lecturer in transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The minicity would be huge compared with conventional malls, measured not in square feet but possibly in square miles, with moving walkways and personal transportation systems tying everything together.
The relatively short distances people are prepared to walk — “An American will not walk more than 600 feet before getting into his or her car,” the authors write — constrain developers from building malls over a certain size. But with the personal transportation system (PTS), all bets would be off. People would be whisked from one end to the other through a combination of people movers and self-driving electric cars on tracks.
Despite being deprived of their cars, people would not have to concern themselves about lugging home heavy shopping bags; the minicity would operate a sophisticated system for moving packages and freight. Neither would they be rained and snowed upon the way shoppers are when walking back to their cars at regular malls; the enclosed development would protect people from the weather year-round.
It also would offer a high level of security and conveniences. Such a community would be especially attractive to elderly people who no longer drive and want to be conveniently located near shops and offices, the authors write. But it also could offer services such as child care for working parents and easy access to parks outside for recreation.
“The original mall becomes the seminal nucleus of a much larger living-working-shopping-schooling-worshipping-playing network,” the authors write. “It also permits malls themselves to be much larger.”
Most importantly, the minicity would bring freedom from the social and physical dismemberment — not to mention noise and pollution — the automobile has brought to the country’s cities and towns, the authors argue.
However, this is not some antisprawl polemic about the destruction of our cities and the environment, or an indictment of planners and developers. On the contrary, Ward and Garrison are modest about their vision, even though some of the issues they raise often are the subject of heated discourse and finger-pointing. In a recent interview about the book, Ward was quick to emphasize that he is no expert on mall design, and is not about to preach to developers about their own business. “These are people who know the game far better than I do,” he said.
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Neither do they predict the imminent demise of the suburbs. Instead, “Tomorrow’s Transportation” is designed to challenge accepted wisdom and present some innovative ideas about transportation, based upon the authors’ long professional experience in the field. They discuss the history of transportation, problems and solutions surrounding congestion, and various innovations for roads, rail and automobiles. We read about the invention of the steam engine in England, and how it forever changed the countryside there, and people’s perception of distance and travel. Similarly, we learn about current experiments with cars that drive themselves, and implications of a road transportation network relying on computer and communications technology that already has been developed.
Much of the book was written over the information superhighway.
“Bill and I have kept up a running conversation on this subject for years,” Ward said. It is a discussion that is designed to provoke further discussion, he explained. And while they make some proposals about how transportation might shape our future, they are not pedantic when it comes to prescriptions or predictions.
“It’s always a little surprising if you hit the nail on the head when you do something like this,” said the self-effacing Ward during the recent interview. The pair are confident when discussing their area of expertise — transportation — but admit that it all becomes more a matter of informed speculation when discussing how those transportation improvements will affect the way people live and work. Few people, they note, predict even closely how emerging technologies ultimately shape our lives.
But recent trends — a renewed enthusiasm for city living and mixed-use urban developments — make their vision seem far less outlandish than some might suppose. The recently completed North Bridge project on Chicago’s North Michigan Avenue (SCT, February 2001) has many of the elements of a minicity, and is spawning more development in the surrounding neighborhood that developers predict will link up to the Loop, with its elevated railway.
Ultimately developers and others in the private sector will determine whether some of these models of development ever see the light of day, the authors write. “[A]ll this may sound very marvelous, but how can it come about? Our crystal ball gets a tad hazy at this point. Will some entrepreneurial company decide there is a market for a PTS and invest in its development? Or will some mall developer decide that a supermall has such great potential that they will fund its development?” Maybe the initiative will come from a residential developer, they suggest.
Or a developer of mixed-use projects, like North Bridge’s The John Buck Co., perhaps?
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