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park(ed) mall
park(ed) mall
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park(ed) mall
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competition's runner-up!There are some really good things about suburban Strip Malls. They provide the venue for small-scale entrepreneurs and business people to offer a wide range of goods and services. As infrastructure, Strip Malls offer flexible blank boxes which can be adapted to the needs of a variety of businesses.The real problem with Strip Malls is their reliance on and reinforcement of our societal dependence on cars as the primary means of transportation. Strip Malls are symptoms of a diffuse car-dominated system which is inefficient and wasteful of resources, which eliminates focal points of public gathering in communities and neighborhoods, and discourages people from participating in healthy, active lifestyles.In any four typical Strip Malls, the shops can be categorized as offering foods, goods or services, and will be present in a similar proportion to the distribution indicated in the matrix below representing the Strip Malls at Balwin, Glengarry, Rosslyn and Lauderdale. The shops identified in the matrix can then be arranged in a weekly schedule for all four sites such that all shops visit each site at least one day a week. The Park(ed) mall retains the commercial activity that vibrant neighborhoods need, while removing the dependence on passenger vehicles, encouraging people to walk in their neighborhoods, crossing paths at the neighborhood stores and gathering at the park. How does it do this? By bringing the stores to you! Rather than getting in a car to drive across town to find the shop you need, the Strip Mall nearest you is replaced by a park. A docking station is located in the park to which specially customized trailers, the new homes of the stores in the old Strip Malls, pull up. The trailers hook up to the infrastructure, water, power, waste and telecom available in the dock and open for business. Within the pattern of typical suburban sprawl, there is generally one strip mall located in each neighborhood and within the half-kilometer distance most people feel comfortable walking to services. The paradox is that though the distribution of these Strip Malls is such that they could serve as the central points of pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, they actually serve a widely dispersed car-driving population. With only 5-8 specialized enterprises housed at each Strip Mall, people need to travel to distant neighborhoods to satisfy all their needs, as shown in the diagram below. The proposal of the Park(ed) mall is to replace the Strip Malls in four or more adjacent neighborhoods, housing the existing shops in the new mobile trailers, and then scheduling them so the full variety of goods and services on offer visit each site at least once a week, bringing all the shops within easy walking distance in each neighborhood.Current vacancies and duplication of shop types at the existing Strip Malls can be eliminated, allowing for one day a week at each site to be returned to the community as a Park(ed)-free day, where the dock and its infrastructure are available to the community for impromptu or organized gatherings, for kids to play in or for a simple stroll through a park.
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