There was a wonderful presentation here two years back by Christopher Leinberger from the Brookings Institutue – author of the book “The Option of Urbanism.” He discusses this phenomenon in detail and promotes walkable neighbourhoods from a developer’s perspective.

More locally, one only has to look at the successful redevelopment of Champlain Mall at 54th and Kerr in South-east Vancouver to see this model in action. The parking lot and 2/3 of the mall space were removed, and a neighbourhood shopping village (with library and police outlet, medical and dental offices, grocery and food stores) integrated with different forms of condominium and apartment living. The developer also agreed to fund an annex to the local elementary school. This was a good project for the developer, the city, and the residents.

having lived in Richmond for many years, the strip mall can’t go soon enough. The days of cheap land making horizontal development cost effective are gone – thank goodness.

In the same vein as what you’ve written Frances, Gordon Price recently highlighted an article on his blog that looks at some of the other factors contributing the decline of the strip mall:

“For more than 50 years retailers have favored the commercial strip: a linear pattern of retail businesses strung along major roadways characterized by massive parking lots, big signs, box-like buildings and a total dependence on automobiles for access and circulation.”

“For years planners have tried to contain and improve the strip. Now they are getting help from consumers and the marketplace. The era of strip development is coming to an end. Evolving consumer behavior, changing demographics, high priced gasoline, internet shopping — are all pointing to a new paradigm for commercial development.”

“Commercial strips are not going to disappear overnight. But it is becoming increasingly clear that strip retail is retail for the last century. The future belongs to town centers, main streets and mixed use development.”

http://citiwire.net/post/2517/

@MB “Malls wouldn’t exist without cars, but then cars are only very inefficient mode of transportation.”

And neither would Safeway, Superstore and car dealer Jimmy Pattison’s Save-on Foods exist.

Cargobikes anyone?

The story suggests that the development will take place over ten years.

Either that is incorrect or LARCO , their consultants and the city planners have not been forthcoming with the local residents, most of whom believe the Arbutus transition would take place over 2-3 years.

Which is it?

It is certainly one way of overcoming local opposition – proceed slowly and wait until they are dead
-30-.

I’m surprised Oakridge wasn’t mentioned in the story. There’s a very big redesign planned for that mall, which is also likely to include new residential towers built over existing parking lots, thanks I’m sure in part to the Canada Line.

Yes Oakridge is mentioned indepth in the article, it’s been planned well before the Canada Line was built, but the market wasn’t there. Now it is.
Another one that will be coming online is Station Square in 2012. The owners will be including office space, residential plus fixing up what is currently a less then ideal situation.

According to Norm Hotson, the architect, the Arbutus Village Shopping Centre is a “failing mall”.

There are two reasons for this:

(1) It was designed to be a pedestrian mall connecting to the numerous walking paths in the area, but the current owner, Larco, ignored the zoning and converted it into an auto-oriented mall with primary access from Arbutus Street locking out the pedestrians from other routes; and
(2) It was designed so that the stores could be open to the public from 7 am to 10 pm, but the current owner, Larco, unilaterally changed the hours of operation (9 – 5 pm during the week, and to 7 pm on the weekend) BY LOCKING OUT THE BUSINESSES AND CUSTOMERS when it converted to an auto-oriented mall about 10 years ago. Larco did all this after they lost their 1998 rezoning application. The businesses were forced to leave or go out of business because of Larco’s unilateral actions.

Apparently the City doesn’t care that Larco is violating the current zoning, because they subsequently accepted $300,000 to redesign the property for Larco’s benefit to the detriment of the other property owners in the Arbutus Village site.

This is a good example of the lengths developers will go to to get their own way even after they lose a rezoning application – drive the businesses out, then claim the commercial area is no longer viable.

To Bill Lee: The Arbutus Village Public Park covers an old stream bed, which is still active and can’t be built on in any event . It connected the shopping area to the neighbourhood to the west, and provided a pedestrian access route to the Arbutus bus for those residents to the west of Arbutus. Mayor Jack Volrich did not push this as an amenity – it was part and parcel of the pedestrian village that the Arbutus Village was designed to be before Larco destroyed it.

The best way for municipal governments to encourage the redevelopment of ‘well-located’ strip malls and shopping centres into more self contained ‘urban villages’ is to allow significant parking reductions for the residential parking.

Then we’ll see even more proposals coming forward. I can’t wait!

I don’t see the mall retrofit as the game changer.

Modernism has long been criticized for being fixated on the tower object; tearing up neighbourhood fabric to put up towers; and putting social housing in towers.

All this is familiar to readers of this blog.

But let us not forget that Modernism also turned a back to the street. Denying its traditional role as site for social mixing; then privatizing the public realm with advertising signs, billboards, and finally shopping malls.

The malls bought the land when it was cheap, and let it lie fallow under a thin sheet of asphalt for a half century. The time is now to actualize that asset.

As at Arbutus Mall, putting the parking underground—four levels—is so expensive that it should serve as a tip off to the fact that the same paradigm is firmly in place. The clientele is still all about the car, and the mall all about the privatization of the social sphere.

The 19th century arcades, cradle to the Flaneur, played a similar role. But, at least they were plugged into an functioning urban environment. I see no evidence that these mall do-overs have any such goal in mind.

The finance and capital behind them is not ready to change paradigm. That is why I think we should turn to the intensification of historic neighbourhoods, those closest to our urban centres, where an incremental approach at the scale of the single lot is still feasible.

The new paradigm is not going to take root at the offices of national and international corporations. These are the very agents that promulgated the now failed modernism.

A new modernity will only grow from the grass roots.

Richard, I can’t give you an intelligent response on a blog. It is not as simple as replacing A with B. Or leaving single family residential intact—where are the impacts of high volumes of traffic on that?

… limited surface space. Well, no. If we go to Surrey and we go to Delta, and we know urban building typologies, we are not going to run out of surface space.

Dangerous to graft into our place problems from other places.

A village is not a one title private property. A village comprises many titles, owners, uses and designs usually accumulating over decades: changing irregularly.

A shopping centre mall is one title, single use ownership: purpose being profit from an otherwise dormant property. Period.

To wit: King Edward village was once a vast Safeway parking lot. At Kingsway and Knight it is a very mean condo project, VPL branch attached, and a very narrow parking access dubbed “Cedar Cottage mews.

Now if ever there was an inappropriate label that is it!

Marine Gateway dubbed it’s private mall a “high street” until the perfidious absurdity was exposed.

Just because a parking lot is labeled village does not mean it is a village. Most noticeable will be the bland corporate, all the same, architecture, built in one swoop with the now familiar, now redundant logos.

The suburban mall has out lived its purpose, and until we begin mature land planning to repair the damage caused by flagrant speculation no matter what nonsense labels are attached a mall . . . is a mall . . . is a mall . . . is a mall

. . . and sure as hell not a village!

@ douglas #24:

You write:

“I am not against strata title of units, but a return of some ‘commons’ , open lands / designated spaces where the whole community retains a vested interest by deed and title, may assist in motivating all parties in the development process to work strategically towards a more workable model. ”

I’m not certain what you mean here. Are you describing parks or public squares?

Douglas, you bring up an interesting notion.

Developing urban commons as a priority would, in effect, be planning and urban design with open space first, rather than with objects (buildings).

Too often open space is treated as the left overs on the project menu, rather than obtaining value-added uses as a significant commonly-held asset.

Moreover, placing emphasis on more open space planning could lead to a more interesting and finely-textured urban environment where canals, parks, pedestrian allees, community gardens and town squares could wend through several developments over several blocks and providing an alternative form of connectivity to infrastructure slated predominantly for cars.

Of course, this tends to indicate how deficient our urban planning models and development methods are at present with an emphasis on singular projects where obsessing about increasing the height and / or number of units take precedence.

It should be a city’s role to do the open space plan, then compose urban design guidelines and standards, and making sure moving people before cars has priority.

@douglas #26,

Perhaps I’m remembering it incorrectly, but I thought the “tragedy of the commons” referred to the misuse of common facilities by people acting in their self interest.

In an urban setting, at least, I still think you’re describing a park or public plaza or, in Vancouver, the waterfront.

There are different legal structures which might work as an alternative to strata titles. For example, I’ve seen situations where the property is held by a corporation, with each share providing an exclusive right to use of a particular area. However, I’m not certain how that would really increase any sense of “community”.

Well actually Douglas separate title as ownership was not exactly my point. Separate title as opportunity to incrementalize is.

Very little time-span-incrementalization happens today.

The closest we’ve got is OV (not quite there) were several buildings are built by different architects to an over all concept around Chick-a-dee Place.

Still the overall developer impeded diversity: but as of now that’s all we’ve got!

According to the overall SEFC plan that could change if the city resists the urge to sell of huge parcels all at once.

Ideally a village accrues by building worker’s cottages around a village pump with enough green space for the housewives to gossip while awaiting their turn to water-up.

From there economic activity builds: shops, pubs, churches accrete.

Later petrol pumps, post offices, butcher, baker, green grocer, fashion stores, travel agencies, bookies, ice cream stands fill out the forgotten interstices and mira we have a high street thru the village!

The spaces between count much, much more than the improvements: syncopated wide and narrow, little places bulging and disappearing, and the effect is totally beautiful and totally impossible in our current financial set-up.

“Only as a final step did we choose to design buildings, which became our thesis projects for graduation.” . . . and that is why your thesis was so satisfyingly successful, I’ll bet.

I’d like to see it!

“The tragedy of the commons“. . . http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/new.nanaimo.center.html

@ Roger 31: “Ideally a village accrues by building worker’s cottages around a village pump with enough green space for the housewives to gossip while awaiting their turn to water-up. … From there economic activity builds: shops, pubs, churches accrete. ”

Where the Commons widen into a park, there is the ideal place for a gazebo, the perfect shelter for gossip-mongering and quick knee-trembling teenage trysts.

Ideally, the Commons wouldn’t be overshadowed by cult-of-the-view towers filled with retired letches and their binocular collections.

@ Bill Lee 6:
” …the urban linear park in the development to the west that Mayor Jack Volrich was pushing as an amenity is essentially shut off and useless to visitors”.

As I recall Jack Marathon Realty shopping centre at Arbutus, but it was Commissioner Art Cowie who pushed for the linear park at the time. You are right, it is lost and the new proposal will make it even more so.

I had a conversation with Norm Hotson at a recent AV open house. They are currently proposing a very weak link to the park. I suggested that if they lost 2 town house units the connection between Norm’s ‘village plaza’ park and the linear park could become meaningful. I hope Norm hasn’t forgotten that conversation.

This brings up another aspect of that same chat. Although there are some good aspects of the design, the entire project feels uncomfortably over-built. And, another consequence was the highest building at 9 storeys was 2 floors into an important neighbourhood view cone. They were proposing a density of +/-2.85. I think if the design were refined to eliminate the above problems, it would not only be a better neighbour, but a a more comfortable place to spend time in.

It’s also good to hear that talents like Norm’s are focusing on fixing some of our sluburban wastelands. I’m not sure that ‘2 towers’ in a parking lot are quite enough. I’m sure there is more to what he is doing there than that.

There are a whole host of other similarly over dense spot rezoning proposals all over Vancouver as a result of the practices of this Vision Council to ignore existing, community generated and accepted plans and zoning by-law requirements. These also have similar negative impacts on their communities and to themselves if they are ever built. Here’s a list of some of them and what IMO are densities which will achieve ‘sustainable and livable communities’:

• Marine Gateway (read bottleneck), proposed — 6.05, should be — 3.0 fsr;
•Granville Gateway (read bottleneck), proposed — 2.85, should be — 2.25 fsr;
• Burrard Gateway (read bottleneck), proposed — 10+, should be — 5.5 fsr;
• Norquay Village, proposed — 3.5, should be — 2.75 fsr;
• Granville bridgehead (read bottleneck), proposed — who knows?;
• WE STIRS, proposed — 6.5 to 7.5, should be — maybe 3.0 fsr assuming it was part of a community plan;
• Shannon Mews (read bottleneck), proposed — +/-2.5, should be — start with +/-0.8 fsr existing (mortgage paid for 15 years ago) and tweak the design to make it work better, perhaps end at 1.25 fsr.

Bottom line is pushing to far may get you a wee bit more questionably needed density, but at a loss of livability.

That is not Vancouver.

Another chance to dialogue on “Form Based Neighbourhood Codes” courtesy of McCreery 36. That list is given hereas a “Form Based Code” with three designations….

1. Downtown Tower Zone
2. Neighbourhood Core, and
3. Neighbourhood Periphery

In each case the proposed built form is scored thus:

(x)— designation: the description misses the goals of a sustainable urbanism.

(√)— designation: the description is in keeping with a sustainable urbanism.

1. Downtown Tower Zone [sky is the limit; permitting is one site at at time]:

• Granville bridgehead (read bottleneck), proposed — who knows?

• WE STIRS, proposed — 6.5 to 7.5, should be — maybe 3.0 FSR (assume part of a community plan);

2. Neighbourhood Core [densities do not exceed 2.33 FSR]:

(x)— Burrard Gateway (read bottleneck), proposed — 10+, should be: 5.5 FSR;

(x)— Marine Gateway (read bottleneck), proposed — 6.05, should be: 3.0 FSR;

(x)— Norquay Village, proposed — 3.5, should be: 2.75 FSR;

(√)— Granville Gateway (read bottleneck), proposed — 2.85, should be 2.25 FSR;

3. Neighbourhood periphery [densities below 2.33 FSR]

• Shannon Mews (read bottleneck), proposed — +/-2.5, should be — start with +/-0.8 fsr existing (mortgage paid for 15 years ago) and tweak the design to make it work better, perhaps end at 1.25 FSR.”

I shopped Arbutus for many years and found prices and ambience much to my liking. The centre was a sort of village in scale ignoring the parking lot: it did centre on a rather benign neighbourhood with tennis close by.

I am not sure how the subsequent replacement of the brewery on 12th can be called a village: it certainly lacks cohesive amenities: i.e. no 711.

Bill #36 and Lewis #38 seem to have a penchant for obfuscation, though.

Call it what you will. Village has entered to planning lexicon and is here to stay. And for promo purposes it seems to work.

But be sure, though, Bill’s y Lewis’s mumbo gumbo not withstanding, none of this parking lot stuff are villages lacking the essential character and variety of. say, Thu Drive or Champlain.

Lewis, just read your comment on the Oly Village post a couple of days ago about the same subject. I see your 2.33 fsr and a few other clarifications, with thanks. But, some additional clarification would be helpful still.