Malls, the Future of Housing?
housingwire.com
housingwire.com
It's called New Urbanism and it was implemented here in Vancouver by the former head of Urban planning, Larry Beasley. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Beasley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism
I mean, it'd make more sense to have residential and commercial combined real estate in a non-urban area.
The point is to increase density in a sustainable way. Buildings malls is not sustainable because there is wasted space. All that indoor walking space could be outdoor parks.
In urban areas, you try to reduce wasted space by building stuff like underground parking. You put services along the sidewalk and close to residential so that people can just walk to these services.
You build residential and office buildings upwards since there is a shortage of space.
You make the neighbourhood more pleasant by putting in outdoor walking malls, green spaces, and building a sidewalk patio culture.
It doesn't make sense to split your downtown core into two. If half of your core is industrial/commercial and the other half is residential, suddenly you have to jump in your car and drive to the grocery store. This causes congestion.
On the other hand, a grocery store, Staples, a cold beer & wine store, an electronics store, a book store are all 2 blocks away. I just step out and walk there and it only takes 5 minutes to pick up that one thing I need at that exact moment.
You wouldn't believe how much less food I waste now that I buy that one fresh chicken breast for dinner and those two bananas I'm going to have tomorrow for breakfast and as a snack.
This is the major downside to mixing a lot of cars with apartment buildings. Many cities do this way better than Vancouver which is terribly overrated as a city to live in. For instance in Beijing the city blocks are very large with residential (schools, etc) on the inside and the major streets on the outside with little through traffic. As a result it's quiet at your apartment through the day in a city of 15M.
The first way is to have larger sidewalks. This puts traffic further away from the buildings and there is less echo reverberating up sides of buildings. The sidewalks are larger in Gastown and deeper in Yaletown. Granville Street is being repaved to have larger sidewalks, too.
The second way to do this is to make the first floor retail. Then make floors 2 through 10 be commercial office space. People don't have to sleep in this space so sound doesn't matter as much.
I live on the 17th floor and I don't really notice traffic noise. I do get noise from Granville Street on Friday and Saturday from the Christian Audigier crowd. If I go to bed early on the weekend, I just sleep with ear plugs in. Inconvenient, but not that huge of a deal.
I used to live in the West End across from a senior's home. I swear an ambulance used to rip up the street at least once a week with it's siren blaring to pick up a senior. Ear plugs don't help in that case.
The third way to reduce noise is to have better windows. The building does have almost floor to ceiling windows and they are not the most sound proof. The City of Vancouver needs to improve the building code with respect to windows. It would save a lot more energy, too.
Oh, who am I kidding? Mall housing -- gag me with a spoon.
You're definitely making a trade-off though, paying substantially more per square foot than you would for older, traditional housing stock in the same area, and foregoing space and a yard. I get the feeling most people in this area will still choose the horrors of a 45-minute commute so that they can live in a cookie-cutter home with a postage-stamp yard, as opposed to a relatively small condominium.
The article doesn't hit this point very hard, but I also think it's important to get public transportation into the equation with these developments. Mass transit options are limited in this area, and I hate that I pretty much have to use my car to travel to downtown Denver or Boulder.
If you agree, you might enjoy the book "How Buildings Learn".
http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/...
HOWEVER.
The cost of demolition and new construction is much lower than renovation, especially when the systems requirements (showers, plumbing, etc.) are so different.
I feel quite confident stating that - aside from a stunt or two here and there - we will never see malls turned into housing in any sort of massive way.
Malls don't have to be just shops, medical facilities, services, light manufacturing. From what I've seen in new stores going into malls, the retail spaces in malls were designed for stores to move in and restructure in that space.
Then there is the counterpoint of "Do I want to have my store/business in such close proximity to all these people living?"
I think that there is a lot of promise and a lot of problems in this idea of a new suburban "urban center" based around renewing/reinventing the mall. And there is the stigma, to many, of the name "mall."
hybrid is almost always the best way to go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Park_Mall
I've often wondered if such a structure could be turned into housing. Although the article wasn't explicit in making this point, it implied that housing in/by malls has been purpose-built thus far. 2M sq. ft. is enough for 1000 very nice condos. How could enough natural light would be let into these spaces? And, how would renovation costs compare to just building from scratch after a demolition. What's striking to me is that it's like building lofts in old warehouse buildings except that these "warehouses" are only 30-something rather than 100+ years old.
Basically it appears to work well in gentrifying inner-city areas with plenty of public transport and activities nearby.
The tragedy of suburbia - James Howard Kunstler
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dis...