Zombie malls and walkable urbanism

(This post is a response to a recent series of articles about dead and dying malls in Lexington, KY)

Rather than thinking of Lexington Mall as a blight or an eyesore, think of it as an incredible opportunity. Across the country, demographic changes and resource constraints are driving increased demand for walkable urban environments. Growing up in Lexington in the 1980s and 1990s, I watched the development of shopping centers at the edge of the city and sprawling subdivisions in Fayette's neighboring counties. This development pattern was appealing in a world of cheap gas and large households. But times are changing. Oil is more scarce and more expensive. Households are shrinking, driven by young single professionals and empty nesters. And with increasing awareness of the challenges of climate change, people are looking for a more "sustainable" lifestyle.

This is not some east- and west-coast trend that doesn't apply to Lexington. The recent housing market study commissioned by Lexington's Division of Planning determined that Lexington has an underserved demand for "higher density product and diverse communities where residents are motivated by proximity to work, walkable environment, and access to green space." Recent downtown development has begun to meet this need, and projects around the Newtown Pike extension are promising; but it's not necessary to focus all the energy downtown.

Long before recent changes in the housing market, a variety of factors--from online retail to continual development of newer, bigger malls further on the urban fringe--began undermining older retail centers like Turfland and Lexington Malls. This problem is not unique to Lexington, and the innovative solutions utilized elsewhere should guide plans for Lexington Mall. In her book Retrofitting Suburbia, Ellen Dunham-Jones examines similar "zombie malls," and shows how they can be remade to thrive in a more urban world.

The model of cities with a single high density center is a relic of the past. The major retail and office nodes along New Circle, Man O War, and the major roads that make up Lexington's "spoke and wheel" transportation system show that automobile oriented development has been poly-centric for a long time now. Why shouldn't high density walkable and transit-oriented districts also spread throughout the city? Lexington's political leaders, developers, and citizens should embrace Lexington and Turfland Malls as two great places to start this trend.

Charter Cities

Paul Romer, an economist at Stanford, has been recently begun advocating for a concept he calls a "charter city". In places like the United States, businesses and similar private enterprises are fairly nimble and able to adapt to changing conditions. Just as importantly, there is a strong system of rules and norms of behavior that allow businesses to fail or to become obsolete, while new ones step up to meet a need. In contrast, cities and other governmental entities are much more resistant to change, generally by design. This is generally a good thing for governments, where stability is essential. For businesses and individuals to adapt quickly, the rules of the system in which they operate need to be stable and well understood.

However, Romer makes a good point: that as societies develop and grow wealthier, there are consistent changes that can be reasonably well anticipated. This is particularly true for cities. A rural community has different needs than a small town, which has different needs than a large city, which has different needs than a major metropolis. Sometimes those needs follow a logical progression, such as the provision of higher levels of police presence. But in other ways, the rules that develop as a small town grows into a city can be inappropriate or outright counterproductive for a major metropolis.

Romer works in the field of global development economics, so he's particularly interested in the application of charter cities to developing countries. His prime example of a charter city is Hong Kong, which was established by a cooperative treaty between the United Kingdom and China. This focus is appropriate, since the growth in urban areas that has already occurred in the United States still is just now underway or looming for much of the rest of the world. The availability of unoccupied land, the obvious requirement for the establishment of a new city, also presents great opportunity. However, as an urban planning researcher in the US, I wonder whether there's something we can learn from the idea here. Romer points out that it's much harder and less efficient to change a broken system than to create a new one and let more nimble entities (businesses and individuals) choose which system they want to be a part of.

I wouldn't say our system of cities in the United States is broken, but it clearly has its flaws. Many like me are concerned that the cities that grew up in the age of automobile-oriented suburban development are poorly suited to the approaching age of peak oil and climate change. It's scary and sad to think of letting these cities "fail" (think Flint, MI), but it's also clear that they can't easily be reformed in the same way that a business would reorganize.

Environmentalists and urban planners are often opposed to greenfield development (the construction of new neighborhoods on formerly undeveloped land). Ultimately, a charter city is a mega-scale greenfield development. However, for the opportunity to create a new city that breaks the mold formed over the last century, I think it's something entrepreneurial policymakers--particularly at the state and local level--should strongly consider.