I want a new thing, one that won't make me sick.
When I lived in downtown San Diego, it had a five-story open-air mall that looked a little like the crazy architecture in Dr. Seuss books. (This is probably not coincidence: He lived in San Diego County, so the art in his books was likely inspired by the world around him.)
As I began researching this, I pulled up the Wikipedia article about it and it begins ominously with Horton Plaza was a five-level outdoor shopping mall in downtown San Diego. It goes on to say In August 2018, the property was sold to developer Stockdale Capital Partners, which plans to convert it into an office-retail complex.... Contrary to some reports the mall was not demolished. Massive renovations of the mall began in June 2020.
My kneejerk impetus is to crack jokes about Amazon eating the world but the intent of this site is serious and I think most people probably really think that's what happened and wouldn't get that I was joking. The reality is that Amazon grew into an 800-pound gorilla not by cramming its agenda down everyone's throat -- though there was probably SOME of that -- but by being one of the first surfers with the best surfboard catching the wave early for a trend towards online shopping.
If it hadn't been Amazon, it would have been something else. The reality is that suburban indoor malls have been in crisis for a LOT of years, in part because they likely grew out of the development of car-centric suburbs which were born of global demographic forces and those forces are like a tide going out, so many of the things they fostered are dying, including but not limited to suburban-style indoor malls surrounded by a sea of blacktop parking.
The gears are grinding in my brain at the moment because I wanted to cite that mall as an example of a thing that didn't quite apply to what I want to write about only to learn the mall is being converted to an office-retail complex. I wanted to cite it because it didn't look like a mall AT ALL.
From the outside, it was intentionally designed to LOOK like a bunch of different buildings and fit in visually with the dense downtown architecture of San Diego's Gaslight District which, as the name suggests, dates to the late 1800s when gas street lights were the norm for a time.
You know, before the car ate the world, when things were still pedestrian-oriented and residential over commercial was the norm in most cities, even cities we currently view as small towns, like Aberdeen, Washington, population roughly 16,000 and where I happen to live at the moment.
With creating this site and using a photo of New York City for the background, something gelled and I was like: "We find cities fascinating because they are sort of like living creatures in some ways and in other ways very much NOT like that."
They evolve organically. They live, they breathe, they grow, but they often have no "skin" -- no clear boundaries -- and no "DNA" -- no blueprint, no clear plan.
And I think historically, when cities tended to be smaller on average than they are today, it was much more likely that you had one person or one family with a lot of power or influence in the area and they de facto served to provide a "skin"and "DNA" without it really being an explicit (publicly stated or officially recognized) function in many cases.
These days, cities are too big for that and I think a lot of current problems grow out of that fact. There is no longer one guiding vision directing growth and you get "Growth for the sake of growth" which has been described in planning circles for decades as "...the ideology of the cancer cell."
This post is really about an image that once flashed into my mind, a silly image that probably shouldn't be described, of purple buildings -- why purple? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -- and going up to maybe three or perhaps four stories filling the downtown area of Aberdeen more densely than it is currently filled and in the image there was a covered pedestrian walkway arching over Wishkah Street, connecting buildings on both sides at the second floor.
There is actually something that looks like an enclosed pedestrian bridge over one of the alleyways in downtown. I have never been in either building in question, so I have no idea why it exists or if it really is a pedesrian bridge or if it's in use, and some city in Alaska has a bridge like that, probably because the weather in Alaska makes the endless rain here look like an annoyance in paradise.
But we do get endless rain here. It's so bad I like to describe it as "Biblical flood levels of rain" and the worst of it occurs in winter, which still breaks my brain and makes me go "Who in their right mind thought making the RAINY season and WINTER the SAME season was a GOOD IDEA???"
Wet and cold are a bad combo for a lot of reasons. It's just MISERABlE and very inconvenient on the face of it but, also, it's genuinely hazardous and a bus driver once called an ambulance for me when I fell on an icy sidewalk in downtown.
So the rainy winters are a genuine obstacle to developing a pedestrian-friendly, walkable downtown and it's realistically going to take more than a few more awnings to get there from here.
But we don't need a mall in downtown Aberdeen, not even a mall that looks like Horton Plaza, and never mind that the mall in South Aberdeen has likely closed permanently followed storm damage. It was likely overbuilt anyway and never did thrive.
What we need is mixed-use development that includes substantial residential development and honors the historic pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use spirit of the downtown while being a creative new answer, perhaps a little bit like the current plan to convert Horton Plaza to commercial (office-space, NOT retail) with residential.
It was a Westfield mall, a name you may know because there are many Westfield malls throughout the world. Although there is, in fact, a website for these malls at Westfield.com, it was a company in Australia from 1960 to 2014 called Westfield Group. From 2014 to 2018, it was called Westfield Corporation and since 2018 it has been Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, a European multinational commercial real estate company headquartered in Paris, France.
Title inspired by a Huey Lewis song that says "I want a new drug. One that won't make me sick." which wasn't talking about drugs at all. Sick building syndrome is a thing and car-centric, NOT pedestrian-friendly design is likely a factor in the obesity epidemic, among other things.
As I began researching this, I pulled up the Wikipedia article about it and it begins ominously with Horton Plaza was a five-level outdoor shopping mall in downtown San Diego. It goes on to say In August 2018, the property was sold to developer Stockdale Capital Partners, which plans to convert it into an office-retail complex.... Contrary to some reports the mall was not demolished. Massive renovations of the mall began in June 2020.
My kneejerk impetus is to crack jokes about Amazon eating the world but the intent of this site is serious and I think most people probably really think that's what happened and wouldn't get that I was joking. The reality is that Amazon grew into an 800-pound gorilla not by cramming its agenda down everyone's throat -- though there was probably SOME of that -- but by being one of the first surfers with the best surfboard catching the wave early for a trend towards online shopping.
If it hadn't been Amazon, it would have been something else. The reality is that suburban indoor malls have been in crisis for a LOT of years, in part because they likely grew out of the development of car-centric suburbs which were born of global demographic forces and those forces are like a tide going out, so many of the things they fostered are dying, including but not limited to suburban-style indoor malls surrounded by a sea of blacktop parking.
The gears are grinding in my brain at the moment because I wanted to cite that mall as an example of a thing that didn't quite apply to what I want to write about only to learn the mall is being converted to an office-retail complex. I wanted to cite it because it didn't look like a mall AT ALL.
From the outside, it was intentionally designed to LOOK like a bunch of different buildings and fit in visually with the dense downtown architecture of San Diego's Gaslight District which, as the name suggests, dates to the late 1800s when gas street lights were the norm for a time.
You know, before the car ate the world, when things were still pedestrian-oriented and residential over commercial was the norm in most cities, even cities we currently view as small towns, like Aberdeen, Washington, population roughly 16,000 and where I happen to live at the moment.
With creating this site and using a photo of New York City for the background, something gelled and I was like: "We find cities fascinating because they are sort of like living creatures in some ways and in other ways very much NOT like that."
They evolve organically. They live, they breathe, they grow, but they often have no "skin" -- no clear boundaries -- and no "DNA" -- no blueprint, no clear plan.
And I think historically, when cities tended to be smaller on average than they are today, it was much more likely that you had one person or one family with a lot of power or influence in the area and they de facto served to provide a "skin"and "DNA" without it really being an explicit (publicly stated or officially recognized) function in many cases.
These days, cities are too big for that and I think a lot of current problems grow out of that fact. There is no longer one guiding vision directing growth and you get "Growth for the sake of growth" which has been described in planning circles for decades as "...the ideology of the cancer cell."
This post is really about an image that once flashed into my mind, a silly image that probably shouldn't be described, of purple buildings -- why purple? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ -- and going up to maybe three or perhaps four stories filling the downtown area of Aberdeen more densely than it is currently filled and in the image there was a covered pedestrian walkway arching over Wishkah Street, connecting buildings on both sides at the second floor.
There is actually something that looks like an enclosed pedestrian bridge over one of the alleyways in downtown. I have never been in either building in question, so I have no idea why it exists or if it really is a pedesrian bridge or if it's in use, and some city in Alaska has a bridge like that, probably because the weather in Alaska makes the endless rain here look like an annoyance in paradise.
But we do get endless rain here. It's so bad I like to describe it as "Biblical flood levels of rain" and the worst of it occurs in winter, which still breaks my brain and makes me go "Who in their right mind thought making the RAINY season and WINTER the SAME season was a GOOD IDEA???"
Wet and cold are a bad combo for a lot of reasons. It's just MISERABlE and very inconvenient on the face of it but, also, it's genuinely hazardous and a bus driver once called an ambulance for me when I fell on an icy sidewalk in downtown.
So the rainy winters are a genuine obstacle to developing a pedestrian-friendly, walkable downtown and it's realistically going to take more than a few more awnings to get there from here.
But we don't need a mall in downtown Aberdeen, not even a mall that looks like Horton Plaza, and never mind that the mall in South Aberdeen has likely closed permanently followed storm damage. It was likely overbuilt anyway and never did thrive.
What we need is mixed-use development that includes substantial residential development and honors the historic pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use spirit of the downtown while being a creative new answer, perhaps a little bit like the current plan to convert Horton Plaza to commercial (office-space, NOT retail) with residential.
Footnotes
I have not been to San Diego in probably over a decade. In 2013, some portion of the mall was legally conveyed to another entity and torn down to make way for a park.It was a Westfield mall, a name you may know because there are many Westfield malls throughout the world. Although there is, in fact, a website for these malls at Westfield.com, it was a company in Australia from 1960 to 2014 called Westfield Group. From 2014 to 2018, it was called Westfield Corporation and since 2018 it has been Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, a European multinational commercial real estate company headquartered in Paris, France.
Title inspired by a Huey Lewis song that says "I want a new drug. One that won't make me sick." which wasn't talking about drugs at all. Sick building syndrome is a thing and car-centric, NOT pedestrian-friendly design is likely a factor in the obesity epidemic, among other things.