# The Perfectly Optimized Building for Late Capitalism ## Метаданные - **Канал:** Stewart Hicks - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbkOMr6eow ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbkOMr6eow) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) you know what I don't think that strip malls get enough credit sure they are not what we normally think of as what great urbanism looks like but they're not going away anytime soon and just dismissing them I think blinds us to their value and their possibility because tucked behind those parking lot areas and superficial flat facades hide something that's far more influential and surprisingly beneficial than you might expect strip malls are where local entrepreneurship can flourish they can provide the tools for convenient and healthy living and they might just be the key for resilient communities today and unlike their enclosed cousins these buildings are not dead yet in fact they're thriving so this is why you should not be quite so quick to write off the lowly strip mall you might not be feeling it quite yet but strip malls are quietly becoming one of the hottest real estate investments in the United States and to be clear I am not offering investment advice here but whenever real estate fundamentals start shifting so drastically as they are with this usually hints at some deeper cultural changes that are lurking beneath the surface case in point retail opportunity Investments they own 90 strip malls and they were just snapped up by Blackstone for $ billion last year meanwhile $10 billion worth of US Open Air retail portfolios are projected to change hands just this year alone after Decades of falling values and Grim retail metrics so why the sudden goal Rush according to the pros accelerating fundamentals are at play is basically code for them just saying they're making a lot of money again over 95% of strip mall space is at is actually now leased and it's outperforming almost every other form of retail and because new construction is so costly these days especially in this weird post-pandemic retail area existing strip malls are becoming hot properties so there's an entirely new calculus at play here instead of letting their crusty 1970s complex just rot away owners suddenly have real incentives to invest and upgrade partly because the community wants it and partly because they see the dollar signs there sparked a wave of strip mall revivals and which property owners they Spruce things up or they add amenities and shockingly they might even be listening to what Shoppers want which brings us to the real question I think here Beyond just offering a quick place to commission a sandwich artist or a latte what else are these things good for well that's dependent on a few different factors some of which we can see right here in Market Square at the place where many believe is the first strip mall ever all the buildings were designed at once to look cohesive connected by an arcaded walkway and managed by a single company and like the foundation of any good strip mall it's well served by parking that was crucial here too because it was to accommodate wealthy commuters who would be parking here after catching the train South into Chicago even though it looks pretty upscale today back in 1916 it resembled much more what we would think of as a typical strip mall just with a landscape Plaza in the middle which came later that recognizable look was developed by architect Howard voran Shaw who crafted a surprisingly clever solution to some really daunting design problems the developers managed to piece together 11 lots for a combin of 400 ft of footage along Western Avenue facing the train which had 260 ft of depth they had two competing goals here first was to maximize the number of parking spaces and then second to give as many shops as possible direct visibility from Western Avenue because that's the only way that pedestrians would ever be able to see and enter them one easy fix might have been to just shove the parking lot out back but Shaw tried something else here he squiggled the footprint of the building and this created 300% more Street Frontage than any other solution that way every shop could face the front drawing the intention of the passers by the next challenge though is that sha he had no idea what kinds of businesses would ultimately be leasing this space when he was designing it so to accommodate that uncertainty he set up a uniform module of about 1200 square ft or about 17 ft wide by 70 ft and those units could be combined or subdivided as retailers saw fit without any major structural overhauls to the rest of the building but that kind of flexibility with the interior it creates a challenge for the exterior and Shaw had a solution for this too because he made a career designing homes for wealthy Northshore clients and he knew that they loved looking at vaguely fancy things without committing to any single Heritage or style so he pulled out all kinds of elements from various eras and places and piece them together in a Loosely like composite design language by repeating certain details of patterns of two 3 and five he achieves a sense of order and balance without being strictly symmetrical and this approach worked beautifully you need variety or something feels monotonous but too much uniqueness can become its own problem if tenants move around in a way that isn't sympathetic to that and the building's facade no longer fits their needs by striking a careful balance Shaw gave Market Square a human feel that still Blends in with its neighbors and the ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbkOMr6eow&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) surrounding city today those shops boast some of the highest sales per square foot in all of Illinois over $800 annually of course anyone that's ever set foot into Williams Sonoma knows how quickly that can add up Market Square is undeniably an outlier here the American Institute of Architects named Market Square One of the 200 best places in Illinois but it's not entirely removed from the wider story of strip malls across the US the core of ideas that shop pioneered ample parking flexible store front layouts and easy visibility would soon Inspire countless others across the country and that's a good thing is that what Martha Stewart says I think it is now that's a good thing because there are enough strip malls in the United States right now to create one Mega strip mall that stretches the entire length of a road trip from New York to Los Angeles without ever breaking it the world's worst road trip interestingly it would be about 70 ft deep the entire way that's the ideal depth and it's the exact same depth as what shock created in the very first strip mall but technically according to the international Council of shopping centers or ICC the ones we just used to plan the best road trip ever it still only accounts for 12% of the kinds of developments that I would actually call strip malls because to them and they should probably know they're the experts the term strip mall is reserved for developments that are under 30,000 squ ft above that you have things that are called neighborhood centers which have supermarkets in them and finally community centers which are almost twice the size of those while an average strip mall might have one or two acres of parking to go with their building a community center might have more like 40 acres of parking I just love how their naming convention sort of tries to mask how detrimental people see these things to actually building neighborhoods and communities because you know the spread of strip malls is tied to the spread of the suburbs blah blah zoning blah blah you know the story 50s a lot of them built '70s even more then the decline started the 1990s around the same time that indoor malls started to suffer but strip malls they didn't quite follow that same path well I can barely think of an indoor mall these days that isn't a sad shell of Despair there's plenty of strip malls that are thriving all over the country and that that's due to their design you can think of a typical strip mall as a basic shell with an open floor plan a pizzeria might need a spacious kitchen nail salon might require specialized Plumbing or a popup Art Gallery might just need a blank canvas and all of those can move in with minimal fuss remodeling is fast and cheap since the framework and utility ities they're designed for quick reconfiguration beyond the interior strip models also offer a straightforward exterior template too a long wall of glass fronts and signage that can be modified for any kind of branding this Simplicity it helps Preserve at least a hint of identity with these things whether it's a GameStop or a nail salon then there's also those other I don't know what I want to call it like flourishes just like in Shaw's design these might be seen as hilariously superficial attempts to create some sort of sense of uniqueness or diversity where they're wouldn't be any otherwise this adaptability has allowed strip malls to endure seismic shifts in how we shop as e-commerce erodes big box profits smaller service-based businesses like Fitness Studios and barber shops drive-through Lanes could be created in places like this and patios can overtake some of the parking lots the basic flexible design can morph to serve local community needs embedding it into the America's commercial DNA the overarching basic but flexible design can morph so that it can serve local community needs so here we are strip malls remain too profitable to be able to demolish yet they come with pretty obvious serious downsides that we've all heard of what's a poor developer to do well some don't have to do anything at all after all these places can be just cash cows the way they are even in their 1970s form by offering lower rent flexible spaces that Empower immigrant entrepreneurs and small businesses in places like Houston for instance the city's sprawling strip malls are exactly where you you'll be able to experience the city's diversity with collages of businesses that you would never put together otherwise like in richill Plaza the Spanish Revival concoction it might have a wedding venue one month or all night buffet that took over or a mosque next door to it every visit's like a surprise like a box of chocolates you'll never know what you'll get or in places like Los Angeles generic open layout mini malls let entrepreneurs just go wild they create businesses with relatively low barriers to entry there you'll find signs with multiple languages plastered all over the storefronts and entire mini public spaces that form inside of the parking lot around a dimsum restaurant that's popular that week for many immigrant owners these mini malls have been a crucial stepping stone to the American dream since you don't need generational wealth or massive loans to rent a 12200 ft unit that already has steady foot traffic across it so it's not just about the design that makes these things work the ownership matters too in Chicago ### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzbkOMr6eow&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 13:00) there's a Community Development organization that's buying up these things and they can invite local entrepreneurs to invest in them as co-ops and then they share in the profits shaping the tenant mix we're inviting you to invest with us to co-own with us that's a really great way to keep wealth circulating inside of a neighborhood instead of letting it flow into the pockets of some absentee landlord somewhere else of course though some projects lean much more aggressively into Redevelopment for example Placo Cino it folded affordable housing right into the tired commercial site and was still able to preserve all the spaces for the existing tenants that were there but I want to wave a caution flag here because if you look at places like mash B Commons it was once a drab strip mall and then it's evolved into something that appears like a quaint New England Town Center but if you dig deeper in places like this it's still just a privately owned retail environment and this leads to all sorts of issues for people who live there because the interests of this town the government and the insanely powerful developer those interests rarely align real small towns grew organically with local businesses owned by locals themselves building an actual sense of community there simply slapping on some historical facade and calling it a Lifestyle Center doesn't magically create this deeper connection with the place so let's check the snobbery around strip malls sure a world where strip malls never took over our Landscapes maybe it would be more ideal but they are here and for a lot of people they offer the very resources that older neighborhoods used to accessible small businesses variety and space for firsttime entrepreneurs we can't pretend that these spaces don't exist just by Conjuring some old-timey railroad Town aesthetic to just cover them up they do not look like what we expect good urbanism to look like but maybe it's our job to figure out how to unlock their full potential and for that we should be looking critically by using real world data not just running with our intuition ition and paring common talking points that's why I've been trying to use more grass and data than usual hopefully you've been noticing it's because I've been diving into Data analysis and visualization recently is part of my daily brain brush UPS I'm brilliant when I have a moment I'll sneak in some of those interactive lessons but there are thousands of those to choose from in subjects like math and science programming or AI That's how brilliant simply helps you get smarter every day it's designed to let you play with Concepts and to build your critical thinking skills through active problem solving not memorizing things you become a better thinker by engaging 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over on brilliant and as always thanks for watching --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/43477*