Friday, February 11, 2011

New Lives For "Dead" Suburban Malls

The suburban shopping mall has fallen on hard times, and Ellen Dunham-Jones, co-author of “Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs,” is thrilled, frankly.
“Every time we see a dead mall, it’s ‘Yay! Another opportunity to get it right,’ ” said Ms. Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Ms. Dunham-Jones sees in the faltering suburban mall an answer to a pressing question: How can aging suburbanites remain in their neighborhoods, as a vast majority of them prefer to do? With June Williamson, an associate professor of architecture at City College of New York, Ms. Dunham-Jones makes a compelling case that shopping malls are ripe for retrofitting in ways that make life a lot easier for an aging population.

Read the full article here:
http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/new-lives-for-dead-suburban-malls/?partner=rss&emc=rss