New Urbanist Big Boxes
An issue came up at a public meeting yesterday, whether or not big boxes can be incorporated into a 'traditional' town center or neighborhood center.
In some sense I think the answer is no. The very nature of big box retailers - their national (as opposed to local) orientation and their broad spectrum dominance of the retail market, almost by itself robs a town of retail diversity and vitality. If new urbanism is about more than form, it is also about community. A new urbanist neighborhood should have room for different types of housing, a new urbanist shopping district should have room for a variety of types and sizes of retailers.
On the other hand, in an urban design sense, there are probably ways of incorporating a big box into a new urbanist-type fabric. I would be interested in hearing about or seeing examples of this. Seems to me the biggest obstacles are - 1) what do you do with the massive parking areas? 2) How do you deal with the tendency of big boxes to have massive, blank walls?
In some sense I think the answer is no. The very nature of big box retailers - their national (as opposed to local) orientation and their broad spectrum dominance of the retail market, almost by itself robs a town of retail diversity and vitality. If new urbanism is about more than form, it is also about community. A new urbanist neighborhood should have room for different types of housing, a new urbanist shopping district should have room for a variety of types and sizes of retailers.
On the other hand, in an urban design sense, there are probably ways of incorporating a big box into a new urbanist-type fabric. I would be interested in hearing about or seeing examples of this. Seems to me the biggest obstacles are - 1) what do you do with the massive parking areas? 2) How do you deal with the tendency of big boxes to have massive, blank walls?
Posted by: Louis Merlin Permanent Link
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