Redeveloping suburban sites like this is a great way to make areas of the region more walkable, but new buildings alone cannot do it, especially when those new buildings are cut off from the larger community.
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This video of Mississauga, ON shows us that density will not save the suburbs.
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This tour of a suburban retrofit site in Edina began with skepticism, but as we progressed. I started to see why the place was worthy of our time.
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Although it’s tempting to picture packing up and leaving suburbia to peacefully degrade, we shouldn’t. We'd be missing out on the unique opportunities it provides.
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While the landscape of Westland remains predominantly suburban, projects like this are steps toward upcycling and intensifying obsolete developments: an important shift from our historical habits of build-and-abandon.
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Suburbia cannot and will not be retrofitted to a substantially different model of development. But a small portion may be salvageable.
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The vast majority of suburban big box stores are not going to be retrofitted. They’re simply too far from anything of note and littered in unproductive locations across the country. But there may be a few exceptions...
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Cities that tethered their future to this experiment are going to struggle while those that still have a pulse in their core neighborhoods will have a chance at renewed prosperity.
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Frequently hailed as a shining example of a successful big box retrofit, the McAllen Main Library is a fantastic space. But is it a realistic model for retrofits across the country?
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In Austin, MN an old K-Mart was transformed into a popular museum—a big box reuse success! Or was it?
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We treat big box stores as mines to be filled up and exhausted. Once depleted, we move on to design and build the next bigger mine, abandoning the former.
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