It now looks like a city street.
By Andrew Blum
Santana Row in San Jose, Calif.
Like insecure teenagers, malls keep changing their style. They are ripping away their roofs and drywalled corridors; adding open-air plazas, sidewalks, and street-side parking; and rechristening themselves "lifestyle centers." This new look may remind you of something: a vibrant urban street. Yet, while these new malls may appear to be public space, they're not public at all, at least if you want to do anything but shop. They represent a bait-and-switch routine on the part of developers, one that exchanges the public realm for the commercial one. They're also enormously successful, by the most recent count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the country. (more)
The developers just get nastier and nastier. Now they're stealing the very look and ambiance of the thing they most want to destroy, the old style town center. Public space being absorbed by private control. We at Webster's Bookstore would not have been able to campaign as hard for Kerry or other liberal issues if we were in such a place. And every time speech is muffled, all causes, left, right and center suffer.
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