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Right. Comparing a shopping mall to a city is almost as bad as Gladwell comparing a Trailblazer to a Boxster.

Santana row is a cheap immitation of a city street. It is made in a way to make people feel like they are in a urban enviroment, mainly b/c there are no true urban enviroments in SJ.

Yes it is a mall, but it takes this form mainly b/c SJ lacks proper city streets, with thriving retail, where you can actually enjoy walking, meeting people, dining, working, and shopping.

You don't have to go out of the country to see where proper urban areas mixed with retail can be great enviroment. Go to Boston's Fenaul Hall, or Harvard sq. where there is a very healthy mix of PUBLIC space, retail and shopping, some offices, and condos or houses.

If people did city planing in a good way, these garish malls would be superflous.

Faneuil Hall felt just as fake to me, kind of like Fisherman's Wharf. The rest of Boston is nice though.

It only takes a few steps to be out of Faneuil Hall and into the rest of Boston. If you haven't seen the greenway since the big dig finished, that's one more nice place to walk directly out of Faneuil Hall into:

http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/2008-05-14

And calling a place nicer than a shopping mall is like saying that my squalid, decomposing first apartment was nicer than a prison cell; true, and irrelevant.

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