something something “paved with good intentions…”

How it started…

This radical vision was the work of Victor Gruen, a Jewish refugee who had fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938. He set his sights on bringing a dose of Viennese urbanity to what he saw as the car-dominated “avenues of horror” of American commercial strips. He imagined Southdale as the centre of a new high-density, mixed-use district, surrounded by housing and offices, as well as a school and a medical centre, with an artificial lake wrapped by curved streets, all forming a utopian “blight-proof neighbourhood”.

How it’s going…

Southdale spawned thousands of imitators across the country, many designed by Gruen, leading him to be crowned Father of the Shopping Mall – a label he grew to despise when he saw what he had unleashed. In 1978, two years before his death, he renounced this legacy. “I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all,” he said. “I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities.”

A good idea — “a new high-density, mixed-use district, surrounded by housing and offices, as well as a school and a medical centre” — spoiled by the speculative games of land ownership. There is another way, as the world’s most livable city proves time and time again.

So many cities are being handed a great opportunity to remake themselves, as shopping malls are decommissioned across the country. Blame Amazon if you like, rue the loss of a vast air-conditioned respite from the weather as you need to, but let’s think more about what we can make from this. In Seattle, one of the first malls in the USA is being gradually remade — 55 acres of land next to a freeway and a transit hub serving light rail and busways, adjacent to a community college and surrounded by established housing, homes and apartments. So far, all we have seen is a hockey training arena because entertainment is more important than housing to those who have a home of their own (like the city’s leaders).

How much social housing or mixed-use development could be built on 55 acres and how popular would it be, given the access to everything that’s already there? 10-15 minutes to downtown by train and access to the whole Eastside — Redmond and Bellevue — by the end of the 2024 makes that area incredibly valuable. But who will cash in? Not the city or county that made the investment in that land. And who won’t be able to buy in? The people who work in the city but can’t afford to live there — exist, yes, but live, in the fullest sense of the word? No. A ground rent or land value tax that captures the value — let the owner hold the title — would go a long way to to undoing the most fundamental inequality — access to land.