What Happens to the (Holyoke) Mall?

Today I visited Western Massachusetts' foremost shopping center, the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside.  I went to this regional mall countless times growing up.  If the nearby one-story Eastfield Mall didn't have what you wanted, or you really wanted to make shopping an activity rather than a task, you went to the Holyoke Mall.  Built in 1979, this retail behemoth dealt the killer blow to our downtown department stores.  (Chances are good that if you grew up in suburban or rural Western Massachusetts, you probably weren't even aware as a child that Holyoke had a real city center with brick and stone multi-story buildings).  Climate-controlled, easily accessible by the automobile, and offering all the stores you could want in one location, the mall has been the retail venue of choice since its inception.

Thing is, I don't like malls much.  Like many others, I've learned that they're built upon the unsustainable foundation of cheap oil.  Patrons of the Holyoke Mall don't drive there just from Springfield (8 miles away), they come from places like my suburban-rural hometown of Wilbraham (20 mi), Greenfield (32 mi), and no doubt well into Vermont (more than 50 mi).  Over the past half-century, we have consolidated and centralized our retail centers into huge shopping centers only accessible by automobile and paltry bus service shunned by white, middle-class customers.  As a result, malls have a huge carbon footprint.

So what's the answer?  Today's urban planners, many of whom subscribe to the theory of New Urbanism, would like to see a resurgence of our traditional mixed-use city centers.  Shops on the ground level, offices and housing above.  Currently, Northampton has the only lively downtown with stores lining the street.  The shops are cute and many do pretty well, but they're just little boutiques.  What if you want to buy a pair of socks?

Holyoke and Springfield find themselves in quite a conundrum.  One answer would be to move the mall downtown, where it would be closer to where people actually live.  That won't work at the Holyoke Mall's current scale, nor anything close to it, because the mall depends on attracting customers from an entire region--not just a city.  Today, there's no way for most people to reach the center of Springfield or Holyoke except by automobile.  So you could move the parking downtown, but how would the city streets handle all that traffic?  The Holyoke Mall depends on two interstate highways (I-90 and I-91) and the six-lane Holyoke Street to feed it.  Basically, the Holyoke Mall is a monster.  It is unsustainable not just in its location but in its size.

For those of you who wonder what my work might be as an urban planner, this is a prime example of one of the huge problems people of my profession have been tasked to solve.

What's my ideal vision for shopping in Western Massachusetts?  The anchor stores (Macy's, Sears, Target, Best Buy) would embrace urban store designs for Main Street in Springfield and High Street in Holyoke.  (Some chains are showing that they're willing to adopt an urban format, but at this point only in large cities).  The real estate is certainly available in Holyoke in many sizes and forms.  The stores would have to be smaller and more efficient with their use of space.  If the cost of gasoline rises to $5 or above, the PVTA might consider light rail in the region.  Those who cannot travel to downtown Springfield or Holyoke by foot, bicycle, or bus would do so by tram or train.

Then there's the question of how to get those suburbanites to fill abandoned buildings and construct on vacant land in the city.  And what do we do with the mall, which apparently has some significant period-significant details like that UFO-style lighting, the geodesic dome, the wooden benches and planters?  Perhaps someday it can be transformed into a new town center.  The answers aren't all there yet, but in challenges such as these I see great opportunity.

Review of Bill O'Reilly's Memoir

After returning from our Christmas season trip to visit the extended family in New Jersey, my stepmom handed me a copy of Bill O'Reilly's memoir, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity.  This hand-off may or may not have been related to the moment when she asked what I was reading in the car and I flashed No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process.

The book was OK.  I'm sure my dad and stepmom enjoyed it a lot more.  First of all, it was hard for me to relate because I'm not a baby boomer.  None of his stories about growing up in Levittown, NY conjure up images of my childhood.  For me, Levittown represents the beginning of suburban sprawl, the car-centric planning that literally tore this nation apart.

O'Reilly feels a lot less threatening in written form.  Sure, he comes across as a bit of a wise ass, but that's sort of the point of the book ("Bold Fresh").  He clearly likes to think of himself as clever.  Most of the stories involve him rebelling against authority figures or manipulating the rules.  O'Reilly also wants you to believe he has a strong working-class background.  I was pretty convinced.  He also loves America, but he's not overly forward about this--I appreciated that.  His religion is mostly personal, and he's not overly keen on the establishment of the Catholic Church, although he recognizes what it did for him during his schooling.  Oh, and he also has a lot of fun, even if he's not successful with women.

The host of the Factor wants to be seen as strongly independent.  O'Reilly is what we call in political science a populist--conservative social values but also supportive of the working-class.  In America, populism does make you a sort of independent, since both parties have strong ties with the corporate powers-at-be.

The book didn't make me very angry.  The one real "WTF?" moment came when he said, "Some think an asteroid or something caused the natural order.  Wow.  Talk about blind faith!" (75).  Aside from that paragraph, I didn't have any strong emotional reactions to his words.  He clearly dislikes people like me (he calls us "secular-progressives"--accurate), but fights that battle in his other book, Culture Wars.  His portrayal of the liberal political view is a little skewed, but probably no more so than the liberal portrayal of the conservative viewpoint.

O'Reilly says that liberal thought focuses on the quest for individual gratification and self-expression at the expense of responsibility to others, and that decline of traditional marriages has led to the decline of families and subsequently enormous social problems (142).  It's true that liberals generally value the individual more than the family--that goes along with a core belief in strong individual social freedoms.   Liberals believe that a comprehensive social safety net for everyone rather than a strong, supportive family for a privileged few best benefits the whole population.  O'Reilly asserts that traditionalists should point to the poverty of single-parent families in order to crush liberal arguments against the traditional family unit.  He's right that we don't want families to be poor, but there are two solutions to the problem.

First, strong social welfare: make sure that the single mother has an individual or group to support her and teach her how to care for her baby.  Also, provide her with subsidized or free childcare so that she can still work and be a productive member of society.  Make sure that the child has a good school to attend and all the health care services he or she needs.  Second, make abortions safe and available, and subsidize them or provide them for free.  If the mother knows that she will be unable to take care of a child, or she's unwilling to care for a child, give her the choice.

There were two cases where O'Reilly impressed me.  I did not know that he had visited over 70 countries.  He decided America was the best.  While I disagree, at least he's seen some of the alternatives.  It angers me when an American defends his or her nation unconditionally and insists on its exceptionalism but has never visited another country.  The other case was the section where he described his two years as a high school teacher.  It sounds like he actually did a substantial amount of good for some at-risk teens in Miami.  Perhaps he's a decent person after all, even with his huge ego.

Anyway, now I get to read something more interesting and soothing to my little liberal heart: Looking Backward: 2000-1887, a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy of Chicopee Falls, Western Mass.

Identification Cards

Between semesters and without a job in Western Mass, I have a lot of free time at home.  I thought I could use some of the down time to read some books that have been on my mind for a while.  So after looking up what was available, I made a list of what to borrow and searched through my wallet for my library card.  Not there.  I checked the stack of cards on my bureau.  Not there either.  Then I realized that because my card only works in Western and Central Mass, I took it out and left it in my desk drawer at Brandeis.  Great.  My Mom let me borrow her card and I thought everything was great.

I walked across town (Longmeadow is blessed with great sidewalks), arrived at the Storrs Memorial Library, found the books, and went down to the checkout desk.  Problem: Mom owes $12 from some videos that my 7-year-old sister brought back late, so I can't check anything out.  I ask the librarian if she can look up my account.  No can-do.  Apparently they've had issues (fraud?).  I need to plead my case with the reference desk.  I explained my situation and was very polite.  I presented my MA driver's license so they could confirm my identity.  They were kind and made an exception for me.  However, one of the librarians said "Your library card is the most important card to carry with you."  That sort of bothered me, but it also got me thinking.

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to consolidate our forms of identification?  European countries do this.  When I went to Denmark, the government assigned me something called a CPR number, which entitled me to both universal healthcare services and access to the nation's library system.  These are just two examples of the government services received with the CPR number.

Many people in the USA have a fear of ID systems.  In many minds, it conjures up thoughts of checkpoints in military dictatorships and invasions of privacy by totalitarian states.  A few of years ago, Congress passed the controversial REAL ID Act in order to establish federal standards for identification, but half of the states have refused to participate in the program.

I opposed the REAL ID Act when it was in Congress, but I'm just not that afraid anymore.  Americans' distrust of government goes back hundreds of years, from the beginning of our invasion of the continent.  I'm not convinced that our culture will ever change to embrace a consolidated form of identification.

But gosh, it sure would make it easier to go to the library.

Disposable Architecture

This post is part of a series on the blog InnermostParts.org called 'Building Blunders of Brandeis.' It addresses the physical aspects of the Brandeis campus, specifically the history and the current state of Brandeis University architecture and planning.

One of society's ongoing problems is what to do with old buildings.  Do we demolish them and build something new?  Do we renovate and re-purpose them?  If they're particularly special, we might even restore them to their original state.  Brandeis is no more immune to this problem than any city or town.  In fact, college campuses may feel the pressures to demolish old buildings stronger than any other communities.  Colleges depend on large donors to renew their facilities, and large donors want their names on fashionable new buildings.

Demolition of the Friedland Life Science Building

For several weeks now, crews have been working at demolishing the Friedland Life Science building and the Kalman Pre-Medical Building.  To my best knowledge, no one has made a fuss.  I'm not a science student, but I've visited both of these buildings.  Friedland was actually pretty quirky and interesting, with large white panels covering much of the exterior and short windows at the top of each floor, creating glass divisions between its five stories.  I believe it was designed by firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbott, which had some very famous founders.

Friedland Life Science Building. Architects: Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott. Built 1956-58.

Should we really treat buildings such as Friedland as disposable?  I don't think so.  Sure, they're not very much in style today, but someday we may come to regret losing them.  Harvard's now-loved Memorial Hall once faced the wrecking ball because 50-or-so years late it had fallen out of style.  Sure, Friedland isn't so grand, nor was it probably constructed so well, but it's so... well, modern.  It was of the era of the Space Race, and in my opinion it showed it.
Friedland isn't the only building with a funky, modern style.  Goldman-Schwartz?  East?  Spingold?  Schwartz and Brown?  All of these buildings have been deeply neglected over the years.  Under the right conditions, any of these buildings could receive its death sentence.  At Brandeis, we take the attitude that after a building goes up, it's okay to leave it to decay forever.  I urge Brandeis to treat its buildings with greater respect.
If you need reinforcement for what our '50s and '60s-era buildings could look like, visit the lobby of Gryzmish across from the campus center.  Without  daily wear from students, the interior has stayed fairly well preserved.  Really, take a look.  Once the examples of that style are destroyed, they will never come back in quite the same form.

Winter Sun Sets Over Friedland

Color is Better: A look at transit maps

Here in the Boston area we have what is, by American standards, a good commuter rail system.  It runs on weekends and holidays, it has a decent on-time performance, it can work for reverse commuting (trains run out of the city in the morning and in to the city in the evening, and it runs at off-peak hours for non-work related trips.  It's also really big.  I don't think its size is appreciated enough.  Why does this matter?  I believe it can affect ridership, even if only a little bit.  It's also a matter of pride and ownership.  If Boston area residents have pride in their rail system as a valued and vital resource linking their communities, then I believe they will be more likely to invest in it.  What's my suggestion?  Re-work the maps.

Here we have the standard MBTA system map.  Each purple line is a commuter rail line, running in and out of Boston through either North or South Station.  The thin, colored lines are the subway and light rail lines.  You can see how the lines relate to the bay, but the other three sides of the map might as well lead to an empty abyss.  Why not include an inset map showing how the MBTA Commuter Rail provides service to a large piece of the state?




Here we have a map of the commuter rail system from Wikipedia.  It shows the lines in purple and the area the MBTA services in pink.  The core city is a darker shade and the closer suburbs are in a middle shade.  It's not essential to the traveler, but it gives the viewer a better idea of the area the trains service.  Add a few major cities and it might give people a good impression of the system's size and all the people it can potentially service. 

This is the Copenhagen metro area transit map.  The subway lines are the thick yellow and green lines.  The regional trains are the gray lines, and the local trains are dark blue.  The most colorful lines on the map represent the S-Tog lines, the suburban train system most comparable to the Boston's Commuter Rail.  In my opinion, the spectrum of color gives you a better sense of the number of lines and their distance.

You could argue that the MBTA Commuter Rail lines shouldn't be colored because they're part of a secondary system of lesser quality than the "T" subway lines.  It's true that the S-Tog trains run every 20 minutes all day, except for peak-hours when they run every 10.  It's also true that the S-Tog is all-electric (no nasty diesel fumes).  Still, my hypothesis is that change can work differently.  Instead of using colors to show the investments we've made, use colors to increase support for investment.

Here's an MBTA Commuter Rail system diagram in many colors, created by a Wikipedia user.  It's not a map, but it shows the lines and stations.  Doesn't it make the system seem larger?  Look at all those lines and stations!  As a Brandeis student, my station isn't just some place on a purple web.  It's a station on the red rail line.  I can look at the map and better identify the stops along my line (aka all the places the train can take me).  It's unique, it's my line.

For a fair comparison, I've provided the closest official example I could find, the MBTA zone diagram.

Couple coloring the lines with thickening them (make them look important, like the primary means of getting around) and you've got a better map, in my opinion.  Include some more lines to show the trains that don't run the full lines (e.g. North Station to South Acton rather than Fitchburg) and it's even better.

The colors will have a different psychological effect on each person, but I believe that one thing most everyone could take from it is a greater appreciation for the wonderful resource we have in Eastern Massachusetts known as the MBTA Commuter Rail.

2nd Annual Boston Bikes Report

Tonight I attended Boston's second annual Boston Bikes Report.  More than once Boston has been rated the worst biking city in the country, but King Mayor Menino has made a new pledge to bicycles.  He hired Nicole Freedman, former Olympic bicycle racer, to lead the effort toward making Boston a "world-class bicycling city."  While she used to race and she says she'll ride on any highway, it's not the hardcore bicyclists that Nicole is looking to target.  No, Nicole wants to see everyday people on bikes, which is how it should be.  After spending four months in Copenhagen, where more than half of all trips are done by bicycle, I'm quite critical of Boston and other North American cities for their very poor bicycle infrastructure.  In two years Boston has gone from less than one-half mile of bicycle lanes to more than 15 miles.  It's still pretty sad, but a huge improvement.  We rank #1 in the U.S. for improvement in the number of trips over 2008--63%.  The big news was that by July 2010 we're going to have a bike-sharing program with 2,000 bikes at 85 stations across the city.  Overall the presentation was great, and gave me a little relief from my frustration as U.S. cities look to catch up where cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam have been excelling for years.

Thanks Nicole for your work, and I look forward to much, much more.

David Byrne's "True Stories"

Last night, on the recommendation of a friend, I watched the 1986 film "True Stories" by Talking Heads frontman and noted urban design and cycling advocate David Byrne.  It had some great commentary on fossil fuel age transportation, including this great quote from Byrne as he drives past the soaring elevated sections of a highway junction (clip):

"Well, I suppose these freeways made this town and a lot of others like it possible.  'They're the cathedrals of our time,' someone said.  Not me."

Bryne also comments facetiously on the bland, garage-fronted, person-less suburban landscape, calling it beautiful, and recognizes the featureless, modular, inexpensive metal building as "the dream modern architects had at the beginning of this century finally come true, but they themselves don't realize it."  He addresses the issues of suburban sprawl and excessive consumer culture and links the two quite well through scenes at the mall and in the home of a women who never leaves her bed.

The most prophetic moment moment of the film comes from a monologue given by the founder of the town's largest company, a computer manufacturer named Varicorp.  He predicts the rise of the creative class, a group of people who work independently of large corporations, live without separate concepts of work and home life, the weekday and the weekend, and working not for a living or for a place in heaven but "working and inventing because they like it."  This really struck me.  Twenty-three years later we have the live-work suite, the most popular unit in new development, and a mixing of uses (residential and commercial) as the primary means to creating high-quality urban environments.  Check out the monologue in this YouTube clip.  it's something you need to see.  Like my friend Matt, I highly recommend the film to any urbanist.