Strip Mall Research Articles

Not your typical strip mall

The field of progressive architecture and the role of the socially responsible architect are both evolving at a dramatic rate. It is virtually impossible to predict how the profession will transform itself due to rapid advancements in sustainable technologies, materials, systems, and contractual relationships.

Not your typical strip mall

The field of progressive architecture and the role of the socially responsible architect are both evolving at a dramatic rate. It is virtually impossible to predict how the profession will transform itself due to rapid advancements in sustainable technologies, materials, systems, and contractual relationships.

Changes

Changes

Where Things Are, From Near To Far by Tim Halbur and Chris Steins, eds., and David Ryan, ill.

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 19 No. 1 (Spring 2009) ISSN: 1546-2250 Where Things Are, From Near To Far Halbur, Tim and Steins, Chris and Ryan, David (2009). Los Angeles: Planetizen Press; ISBN 0978932927. I have sometimes attributed my career in planning to the hours I spent as a young boy pouring over Richard Scarry’s book What Do People Do All Day? I would lose myself exploring every illustration, fascinated by the anthropomorphic rabbit and pig families that inhabited the town squares, market places, dentist offices and bus stations of “Busy Town.” It was only after a fellow master’s student confessed that his path to planning ran down Disneyland’s “Main Street, USA” that I felt comfortable admitting this to anyone (including myself). So hat’s off to Tim Halbur, Chris Steins, and David Ryan for their recent contribution to children’s planning-related literature. Told in verse and animated by drawings, the book is a walk through “the urban to rural transect” with a son and his mother as she reveals the disturbing truth of her day job: she’s an urban planner. All joking aside, it’s a noble effort at explaining planning to the hard-to-reach 3-year-old market. The book uses simple language, bold text, rhyme, and detailed illustrations to walk us through the various built and natural environments of the city and to introduce the central idea that cities don’t just happen, they are built. Indeed, they are even planned. My daughter enjoyed exploring each page, pointing out the squirrels, the dog riding in the bike basket, and the Waldoesque frog that jumps along with the main characters through the book. But being the ripe age of seven, she haughtily declared that the book was boring and “too easy.” She allowed, however, that younger kids might enjoy it; a fact 357 confirmed by her 4-year-old friend Phineas, who deemed the book “very nice” (even though his older brother Thaddeus wouldn’t go beyond the cover). My 12-year-old son Kieran was more insightful: “It’s a bit simplistic, but hey, it’s for 3-yearolds .” Explaining planning to young children is no easy task. I remember my experience at parent career day when my son was in first grade. The dad before me was a fireman, and the mother after me was a nurse. My brief talk on being a planner drew many blank stares, and the thank-you note I received later from one of my son’s friends read: “Thank you for your talk. I didn’t know people did that.” Where Things Are will not only help explain that indeed there are people who do that, but will also introduce some important realities of urban development: that we’ve constructed a Euclidean system of separated uses where density is concentrated at the core and tapers off into car-dominated suburbs and a distant rural hinterland. Well, that’s the traditional concept anyway, and it was one of the ideas I found myself taking issue with as I enjoyed the book with my daughter and her friends. I certainly understand the usefulness of the transect, but worry that it perpetuates the idea that “good planning” has to provide for auto-dominated uses in sprawling suburban fringe areas. Does it? And if it does, can’t we at least shelter our 3year -olds from that reality until they are, say, five? Or do I need to come clean with my kids and let them know that it is the planner’s job to make “the suburbs wide”? Perhaps I’m being naïve, but with climate change staring us in the face, I think it’s time to polarize our rose-colored glasses and question some of our current conceptions. I detected that at least the book’s illustrator shares my sympathies. I could swear that the little boy in Where Things Are was walking with a bit less spring in his step as he passed the suburban strip mall. Even his mother is pointing off the page, into the promise of the less monotonous, more child- 358 friendly environment of the transect’s rural...

Community Context and Strip Mall Retail

Strip malls (or mini-malls) are a common land use, historically promoted by U.S. zoning practices that concentrate retail and commercial development in a narrow band along urban arterials and major streets. They are an entry-level retail niche offering opportunity for independent, start-up businesses that serve a limited market. Communities have begun to question land uses that enable efficient ingress and egress of vehicles in retail and commercial districts but give little attention to multimodal motility. Some communities are redeveloping small mall zones on the basis of “complete street” principles, expanding landscape plantings, and redeveloping the character of a business district. This study assessed public response to one element of small mall (re)development: landscape and vegetation. Prior studies indicated that consumer behavior is positively associated with city trees (urban forest) on multiple cognitive and behavioral dimensions. In mail surveys depicting varied roadside treatments, residents of three major cities in the Pacific Northwest were asked to indicate preferences and perceptions about proposed changes. Survey stimulus materials addressed visual quality, retail perceptions, patronage behavior, wayfinding, and willingness to pay for goods and services. Combined econometrics and psychometrics indicated that respondents prefer landscaped roadsides and report positive retail behavior, such as willingness to pay 8.8% more for goods and services in well-landscaped malls. Redevelopment and roadside management guidelines are proposed based on the research results, with implications for the economics of local communities.

Post-Hurricane Katrina Infection Control Challenges and the Public Health Role at a Mobile Field Hospital

ISSUE: From September 9 through October 21, 2005, by request of the North Carolina State Medical Assistance Team through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, a public health team (PHT) provided support to a mobile field hospital in Waveland, Mississippi following reported cases of gastroenteritis and rashes among staff. The field hospital, located in a strip mall parking lot, included triage, ambulatory care, and a self-contained mobile trauma center. Most staff worked in tents, in excessive heat, and without requested handwashing facilities. Lack of infection control policies and procedures were an immediate concern in this setting. PROJECT: The PHT, comprised of an industrial hygienist, an environmental health specialist, a physician, nurse or epidemiologist, and administrative support staff from county and state health departments and public health regional surveillance teams (PHRSTs), was assembled to provide needed areas of expertise. The PHT conducted an assessment of the hospital environment and identified lack of adequate handwashing facilities, infection control and other concerns. These situations included dust blowing through patient care areas caused by fans and landing helicopters, insufficient storage space, equipment disinfection issues, improper medical waste disposal, and shortage of sharps containers. The PHT developed daily corrective action plans to improve infection control practices. RESULTS: Hand washing stations with running water were provided for the hospital and adjacent church-based cafe to replace the initial hand hygiene method. Procurement of more tents and pallets helped keep supplies clean and dry. Screening of tent openings into the ambulatory care area decreased dust and insects. Medical waste disposal issues were resolved through disposal contracts, increased perimeter security, and wrapping biohazard bags around rigid plastic containers. LESSONS LEARNED: Infection control practices are essential considerations in field hospital environments during disaster response. Public health professionals can provide valuable support with development of pre-deployment infection control policies and post-deployment assessment of these policies.

David Charles Sloane and Beverlie Conant Sloane, Medicine moves to the mall, Center Books on Space, Place and Time, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, pp. xiii, 198, illus., £29.50 (hardback 0-8018-7064-X).

The American healthcare system is at a crossroads. With 41 million persons lacking comprehensive health insurance, and with hundreds of small rural, mid-size, and large urban hospitals teetering on the brink of insolvency, it is indeed an opportune moment to examine the function of architecture for health within its broader cultural contexts. This book, co-authored by David Charles Sloane and Beverlie Conant Sloane, writers based in Los Angeles, centres on the historical evolution and functions of healthcare institutions in the everyday American landscape. Their core thesis centres on the shopping mall's emergence as an economically and socially viable precursor, as well as alternative. The mall is examined as a precursor within the post Second World War automobile culture that enveloped America and that continues unchecked to this day. Mall settings provide an alternative, serving stringent economic and access to care requirements of the provider in ways that no longer can be fully met by traditional, highly centralized medical centre-based hospitals. Hospitals which have reinvented themselves in this manner are discussed at some length, notably the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. It is argued that due to its success as a type, it was natural to relocate services from what the late Roselyn Lindheim termed inflexible “pill hill” medical centre aggregations to smaller, far more flexible outpatient care settings. The focus on place—the relationship between the care recipient and the places where care is dispensed—is the book's key original contribution. This alone sets it apart from other recent books on the subject of twentieth-century transformations in the American healthcare landscape. This focus on geographic proximity between home, workplace, and care setting is admirably amplified throughout the book's prologue, titled ‘The evolving architecture of healthcare’, and its three major chapters: ‘The medical workshop’, ‘Humanizing the hospital’, and ‘Shopping for healthcare’. Three photo “galleries” are sandwiched between these chapters: ‘Machine medicine’, ‘Mall medicine’, and ‘Mini-mall medicine’. The book begins with an informative historical account of the rise of the American hospital as an institution and as a building type, from its nineteenth-century inauspicious origins. These institutions were often housed in large manor residences in cities, in stark contrast to the sprawling, monotonous, technology-obsessed contemporary medical centres of today. Many of the accompanying photographs will be of particular interest both to the architectural historian and to the general reader. The authors come out on the side of the mini mall, extolling its supposed “virtues”. These include their convenience, not unlike a short jaunt to one's neighborhood convenience store, closeness to home, and their clear, concise internal wayfinding attributes. These latter qualities contrast with the labyrinth of corridors encountered on the typical medical centre campus and are viewed as essential to the mini mall clinic's success; otherwise people will not come back to “shop” for healthcare, regardless of whether desirable non-health care amenities are close by. A question arises. Does not the quality of services diminish when the strip mall clinic comes to be perceived as little different from the payless shoe store next door? This is acknowledged by the authors as the Achilles heel of the strip mall clinic. In the second half, the significant share of the discussion is devoted to the ongoing tug of war between advocates of New Urbanism smart growth policies, and advocates (many of which are healthcare institutions, for better or worse) of unbridled suburban roadside sprawl. These opposing positions are not-so-subliminally underscored in the illustrations contained in the third photo gallery. Unfortunately, these are mostly of banal, formless buildings, bearing very little intrinsic architectural merit. This is precisely where the authors' de-emphasis on architectural design per se comes back to haunt them, for the buildings shown are architecturally uninspiring, and, ultimately, somewhat undermine the core thesis. This facet of their argument would have been greatly fortified had genuinely clever, architecturally innovative clinics been included. They are not impossible to find (particularly outside the US) if one looks hard enough. Regardless, in sum, this book fills an important void with respect to our understanding of recent developments in the milieu of the American everyday suburban healthcare landscape, and helps the reader understand how the current hub (mothership hospital) and spoke (spatially dispersed network of outpatient clinics) system became ubiquitous. Above all else, this book holds the potential to fuel much-needed further research and debate.

Traffic Way Conceptual Plan: Arroyo Grande, California

Traffic Way Conceptual Plan: Arroyo Grande, California

Toywars

Toywars

Multiculturalism Aborning: The View from the San Gabriel Valley

On a recent trip to Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to visit a pizza parlor in the eastern suburb of Monterey Park that my parents used to take me to as a kid. I hadn't been to the place in years, and when I sat down, I had to smile at the memories it brought back. The place was still dark and dingy but smelled great, the tables and chairs were the same heavy, dark, beat-up wood, and the restaurant still had the knee-high step-stools set up at a picture window facing the kitchen so children could watch the pizzas being made. As I waited for my pizza, though, I became increasingly aware of the many things that had changed over the years. The most apparent was the site of the restaurant itself. Whereas the restaurant in my youth was set off by itself at the foot of an empty hillside that was covered with wild mustard in the spring, now, some forty years later, the place stood in the center of a garishly-lit strip mall of small businesses that was itself part of a small constellation of similarly illuminated store-front clusters, that, based on the signs, were now serving a largely Korean and Chinese clientele. I was aware of how much Monterey Park and environs had become Asian and Asian-American enclaves since the

Fluid Arguments: Five Centuries of Western Water Conflict by Char Miller

family. Again, the exclusion of an Isseimaterial object ? a Japanese-stylebathhouse ? from the official landmark underlines a common theme of racial exclusion. Dubrow makes bril liantuse of these "places" not simply to illumi nate the Issei position vis-?-vis the dominant public history but also to advocate for amore inclusive narrative thatwould testify to the multiethnic heritage of Selleck and theNeely Mansion aswell as ofAmerica itself. Sento at Sixth andMain extends thediscus sion of Japanese American marginality to the postwar years. Countering the accepted notion of successfulNisei assimilation,Graves details in the lastchapter the circumstances under which theHoliday Bowl came into being during the 1950s as amecca forLos Angeles Nisei bowlers who had encountered the racially exclusionary policies of theAmerican Bowling Congress. Just as other featured landmarks ? such as a com munity hall, a Japanese school, and a Buddhist temple ? had startedout as cultural hearths in theprewar years, so thebowling center emerged as a refuge for the American-born generation. Moreover, this landmark isunder the threatof demolition now "forredevelopment of the siteas a strip mall" (p. 195),despite community oppo sition.Not only does this suggest the similarity of racial experiences among the immigrantand second generations, but itcorresponds with the underlyingmessage of thisbook: "Beforemany more aspects of thisheritage are lost, itis impor tant todocument the surviving landmarks,plan for theirprotection, and develop programs of public interpretation"(p. 3). Preservation, there fore,needs to go hand inhand with interpreta tion or reinterpretation. Sento at SixthandMain does not include any landmarkspertaining to the wartime internment of JapaneseAmericans. This appears to reflecta conscious decision of theauthors,who argue that an excessive focus on that subject has led toun evenness inpreservation efforts and biases in what isremembered. Thus, theyargue that"sustained efforts areneeded toprotect the full rangeofplaces that are significant in JapaneseAmerican heri tage" (p. 5; italicsadded). The inclusion ofmun dane places such as a sento (public bath) and a midwifery in lieu of camp-related objects poignantly shows the authors' attempt to learn "the scope, complexity,and characterof the world the Nikkei hadmade" beyond the internment. With its intriguing images and well-crafted stories,Sento at SixthandMain isrecommended forevery levelof readers,but a fullappreciation of its innovativemethodology and scholarship will probably require a basic understanding of JapaneseAmerican historiography. Fluid Arguments: Five Centuries of Western Water Conflict EditedbyCharMiller University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2001. Maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 384 pages. $45.00 cloth. Reviewed byWilliam L. Lang Portland State University,Portland, Oregon Nothing in the history of the Ameri- ment. The sixteenarticles inFluidArgumentsun can West isas contentious or as overflow- derscore how criticalwater policy and disputes ing with litigiousness aswater use and develop- over theuse ofwater have been in thehistory of 274 OHQ vol. 104, no. 2 the West, fromwater rights in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centurySpanish colonies toon going fights over water use between urban resi dents and agriculturaliststhat make today'shead lines.The book leads off with a helpful and rang ing introduction by the editor,Char Miller, and thendivides thetopic intofourchronological sec tionsthataddressNew Spain's lands inthe Ameri can Southwest, Indianwater rights,agricultural water use in thenineteenth and twentiethcentu ries, and the era of dam-building. As inmost collections of this sort, the articles are uneven in quality. Some aremore descriptive than analyti cal, but each contributes to a better understand ingof the roleofwater in western history. Studies by JesusF. de laTeja, ShellyDudley, and Sandra K.Mathews-Lamb explicate therole early irrigationefforts played inSpanish coloni zation effortsin the Southwest, with emphasis on irrigationas a foundation forsuccessful colo nies. Bonnie Lynn-Sherow,Donald Pisani, Alan Newell, and Daniel McCool treat the often neglected role thatirrigation andwater rights have played inNative American history and how In dian water rights affect water use, an important subject in the largerhistoryofwater in the West. Irrigation on reservation land, as Pisani points out, consistently favoredwhite agricultural in terests over Native interests and became "per haps thebiggest obstacle to Indian agriculture" (p. 87). Water also provided Indian tribes with an unexpected lever, Newell argues, intheSupreme Court's establishment of the so-calledWinters Doctrine in1908, which "insertedthe United States intostate water proceedings" because thefederal government acted as trusteeforthetribes (p. 96 ). McCool's history of the Winters Doctrine as...

Effect of tornadoes on residential masonry structures

In the early morning hours of February 23rd, 1998, seven large tornadoes ravaged centralrnFlorida. A total of 42 people were killed and millions of dollars of damage was done. A strip mall andrnother commercial structures sustained considerable damage and several residential areas were completelyrndestroyed. Based on field observations, the paper examines the causes and sequence of structural failurernfor the masonry single family homes. Wind speeds are estimated based on the observed damage, andrncompared to the meteorological data. Finally, recommendations are given that could help to eliminate orrnreduce similar failures in the future. It was found that with simple, cost effective measures, most if not allrnof the damage could have been prevented.

ECOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN BROWNFIELDS REDEVELOPMENT

ECOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN BROWNFIELDS REDEVELOPMENT

Assessing Human Exposure to Benzene at Petroleum-Contaminated Site

Entry of volatile organic compounds into buildings is often considered when evaluating air exposure pathways during remedial investigation of petroleum-contaminated sites. This paper presents two approaches used to evaluate human exposure to benzene inside a former gasoline station converted into a strip mall in Manitoba, Canada. Passive air sampling was used to measure benzene in indoor air several times over a two-week period. Soil-to-indoor air vapor transport and worker exposure were modeled to evaluate the potential impact from entry of benzene into the mall. Because these transport models lack field validation and their results can be highly dependent on the sophistication of the models, several models were used. Benzene levels inside the mall were comparable to average levels observed inside Canadian residences. It was not apparent that air inside the mall had been impacted by subsurface contamination at the time of sampling. Modeling of benzene exposure arising from soil vapor entry suggested low incremental exposure for workers compared to what they would receive by inhalation of air inside typical residences. Soil contamination was allowed to remain in place based on these findings.