 | Topics: Community Malltown Square
A Legislating Civil Society Project
An introduction to the Malltown Square project, undertaken by the Walt Whitman Center, and a report on current trends in malls and democratic space. The aim of the project is to analyze the challenge of creating new suburban public space in malls and then move toward a model design and possibilities for a pilot. Case studies. The Legislating Civil Society and Malltown Square projects are projects of the Walt Whitman Center. All materials reprinted with permission from the Walt Whitman Center, Department of Political Science, Rutgers University. Contents Case Study: Reconfiguring Commercial Space in Suburbia as Civic Space
Case Study: A Report on the Actual: Malls and the Question of Democratic Space Reconfiguring Commercial Space in Suburbia as Civic Space More than half of all Americans live in suburbs where the primary public spaces are shopping malls. Whereas in cities, towns, and villages, public space invites mixed usage and contains churches, schools, courts, theaters, civic buildings as well as stores, malls are exclusively commercial. Access and architecture together conspire to make buying and selling the only thinkable activities. Yet, because they are the only thing resembling public space available to suburbanites, they serve willy nilly as teenage hangouts, strolling arenas for senior citizens, weather-proof play destinations for mothers with small children, and general purpose social gathering places for just about everyone. They can be regarded as social space in the default mode. Those who use malls are looking for much more than just a shopping arcade but are offered nothing more than commerce. Many critics have contented themselves with reviling both suburbs and malls that define their public space, and it is true that they have drawn people from towns and cities and have undermined urban life in the public square. However, as long as the mall seems an ineluctable concomitant of suburban life, we believe it makes more sense to rethink the laws, zoning ordinances, development incentives, and architecture that have defined it. Are there changes that could reconfigure malls as genuine public spaces? Can an architecture of civility and civic association be introduced that, with appropriate local government regulations and development incentives, might expand the mall mission and bring them more to resemble general purpose public facilities—a genuine public square or "downtown" for suburbs without traditional centers? Imagine a mall that included a community theater, a childcare center, a public health station, a "Hyde Park" corner for political debate and pamphleteering, a community art gallery, an interior court with music performances, a public library/communications center with access to the internet, a kid's playground, and a storefront "city hall" where local representatives could face their public. Imagine an architecture that integrated and interspersed these kinds of civil society facilities with shops and stores, and that reclaimed public space from what have become homogeneous commercial arenas. In order to transform malls, we need to address law and regulation, commercial incentives and penalties, cultural anthropology, and then seek an appropriate civic architecture. How can local municipalities use their tax, zoning, and curb cut regulations to condition developers' and chainstore behavior? Which incentives (and penalties) can be expected to turn developers into collaborators? What kinds of group psychology and cultural dynamics are at play that might be used to support civic space malls? And what might an appropriate civic mall architecture look like? If malls are the only public spaces left to us in many parts of the country, they must become more like real towns—a new genus of urban geography we might call "Malltown Square." If commerce is not to become the sole activity we engage in when we are in public, malls must offer alternative activities—civic, cultural, athletic, political, and recreational—that define us as citizens as well as consumers. It is the aim of this project then to bring together architects, planners, social scientists, developers, commercial vendors, and local government policymakers and regulators to critically analyze the challenge of creating a new suburban public space called Malltown Square; and then to move towards a model design and examine the possibilities for its realization as a pilot. In addition, recognizing that innovation and experiments are underway in many communities, we will examine how some malls have recently taken on more public functions and the legal challenges they have aroused. We emphasize architecture and design in the first instance because we believe, in the spirit of Paul Goodman, that the shaping of space is how we initially create our public and interactive lives; and we are persuaded that architects possess the civic imagination and design artistry to lead a project whose end is the re-establishment of a robust and democratic civil society. More Information Kevin Mattson
Research Director-Walt Whitman Center
Department of Political Science
409 Hickman Hall-Douglas Campus
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ 08903 (908) 932-6861
(908) 932-1922 FAX A Report on the Actual: Malls and the Question of Democratic Space A Walt Whitman Center Report
Prepared January, 1996 (will be revised)
Prepared by Dr. Kevin Mattson, Research Director This report is part of the Walt Whitman Center's project on malls and democratic public space. While we plan to design an ideal mall which includes both commercial and public functions ("Malltown Square"), we also want to illustrate in this report and our conference that our plans are in tune with current tendencies in American design and planning, law, and politics. Though we understand quite well that mall designers might seem intent on creating spaces that are solely private and commercial, we also believe that this is not the only existing pattern. We need not conclude with a number of social critics that malls have completely killed public space. To provide order to this report, it will be divided into the following sections: Current Design and Planning Efforts
The World of the Citizen
Law and Politics
Conclusion Current Design and Planning Efforts In her classic work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jane Jacobs argued that the mix of commercial, residential, and public functions within one neighborhood enhanced urban life. Though much of American planning has ignored this insight by organizing life around one function (i.e., zoning creates residential areas completely separate from commercial areas) many contemporary planners are trying to work on the basis of Jane Jacobs's argument. This is seen most clearly in the "new urbanism," an important and influential approach in American planning. Critical of contemporary suburbs, the new urbanists take as their model the old New England town—a "walking town" (these towns grew up before the automobile) based around a commons or public square where both commercial and public buildings were set. The planners of this new urbanism believe that a better quality of life extends from kinder surroundings. Instead of planning automobile dependent communities, these designers create towns where people can walk to stores. They try to diversify neighborhoods by mixing a number of housing types, ensuring that people of different classes will live closer together. Streets are made smaller than normal, and houses are pushed up closer to the streets so there is less of a split between public and private life. Most importantly, they plan town centers where civic life can be focused. Here they place parks, private commercial businesses, government offices, libraries, and schools. By doing so they hope to create a civic spirit and a focus for community and public life long lost from most suburbs. Planners have created a number of "new small towns," most noticeably Seaside, Florida (designed by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk), Laguna West, California, and Kentlands, Maryland. Though planners influenced by the new urbanism have focused on building entire communities, they have also designed a number of shopping centers in existing communities. The malls they designed often mix commercial, civic, and public functions. These developments are crucial for us to learn from. It should not surprise us that mall planners recognize the importance of civic space. Just as malls began to dot the American landscape in the 1950s, Victor Gruen, the designer of the first enclosed shopping center, argued that malls should serve as a town commons bringing together citizens who faced the increasingly atomistic feel of sprawling suburbs. Today the spirit of Gruen lives on. In Mashpee, Massachusetts (on Cape Cod) planners designed the Mashpee Commons based on a New England town. Within the boundaries of this mall they placed offices, a library, a church, and a senior citizens' home. In Silver Spring, Maryland planners are now developing a mall which would include recreational, social, educational, and cultural functions. One associate of the planning team for this mall believes that it would be based on the "town center concept." He explains, "The town center concept always has been to bring people together in a fashion that they can be able to express themselves in an environment where they feel safe, and at the same time they can enjoy themselves and engage in various recreational activities." [1] Closer to home, the Bridgewater Mall in Somerville, New Jersey, based on an agreement between the local town and private merchants, built three community-function rooms where local civic organizations can put on gatherings free-of-charge. All of these examples show that planners hope to widen the uses of malls and make them more like towns and cities. If our only hope was future malls, then we would have to leave behind a number of enclosed malls already built. But in fact a number of malls have been retrofitting their space and introducing public functions. The Rouse Company has built a booth for community activities in its mall in Columbia, Maryland. The Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation, the largest mall developer in America, has followed suit. In New Jersey, the Department of Labor and Department of Human Services have worked with about four malls to introduce kiosks funded by both the malls and state moneys. The kiosks offer citizens job listings not available in local newspapers, information regarding job trainings, and background on child care centers and other human services. Though this project, as is typical with many government programs, envisions citizens more as clients (as consumers of public services), it has also introduced some important civic issues to the debates about malls. In the first place, state government and private business institutions have cooperated (the mall essentially subsidized the kiosks); this provides a very important basis for future institutional reform. When Gordon Loptson, at the Department of Labor, was asked about the project, he made it clear that malls often wanted to gain the favor of local public opinion. Though not all malls have responded Ws way, this shows that malls are not dead set on remaining purely private commercial spaces. Planners and design specialists who heed the call to civic space have played an enormous role here. The World of the Citizen If our project focused only on planners, we might become top-down in our approach and contradict our belief in democracy. In fact, one of the most exciting tendencies within modern planning has been citizen participation. Drawing on the work of William Whyte, planners have tried to incorporate citizens' criticisms of contemporary modernist planning. The Project for Public Spaces has led in this initiative—analyzing the ways regular citizens interact in public and having people tell planners what they want. This approach has influenced many state planners in New Jersey and elsewhere, and here at the Whitman Center, we support the increasing cooperation between planners and local citizens. A key component of our work will be to do this. [2] Clearly citizens want something more from malls than just the opportunity to shop. Go to any shopping center, and you will see citizens socialize with one another as more than consumers. In fact, planners seem to be responding to the fact that citizens have increasingly stayed away from malls. As shopping via catalogues, TV, and the internet has increased and one-stop shopping stores like Walmarts have too, malls become less attractive to consumers. [3] Planners attentive to this have tried to introduce more functions to their malls due largely to this implicit suggestion made by citizens that they want malls to offer more than just shopping. To date, most of these experiments have been in the area of recreation and entertainment and have not been civic or political. Nonetheless, at times citizens have demanded a political and civic component to life in malls. Understanding that the mall has replaced the older downtown for many communities, churches, libraries, and civic function rooms have been located there. At Bridgewater Mall in Somerville, New Jersey, many civic organizations, including charity groups and others, use the civic function rooms to gather and take part in voluntary activities. Some citizens have also demanded from malls not just civic space but also political space. Seeing the mall as one of the few places in the suburbs that people come together, activists have used them as places to sway their fellow citizens. By speaking on soapboxes and handing out leaflets, these citizens have conceived malls as the budding ground for a "public sphere." They have introduced one of the most important of public functions—politics as talking and arguing—into the mall. In the process, they have introduced an important legal and political debate about the use of malls for democratic and public activities. Law and Politics There is a long history of legal rulings on public speech in malls. They have emerged due to the activities of regular citizens leafleting or speaking in malls and thereby conceiving them as public space. The first and clearly most important legal ruling inspires little confidence. In 1976 the United States Supreme Court ruled that free speech did not pertain to malls. Management could decide if they wanted to play by the rules of the First Amendment or not. But the Supreme Court recognized that states could rule otherwise. To date, rulings in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington, and New Jersey have pointed towards conceiving of malls as public spaces. [4] On first appearance these rulings are quite simple: no matter where a citizen is, that person has the right to free speech. Although these rulings are important, the conception of citizenship and politics behind them is quite thin. What is more interesting are the socio-political observations behind these rulings. For instance, in 1968 when Thurgood Marshall argued that a shopping center in Pennsylvania had to abide by the Constitution, he argued that malls were the "functional equivalent" of a downtown in pre-automobile cities. More recently, in a ruling in Colorado (Nelson Bock and Patricia Lawless-Avelar versus Westminster Mall Company, 1991), the state Supreme Court argued that since the city helped in a number of ways to support the malls (i.e., taxation policy, etc.), it was not only private but also public. The Court went on to argue that the mall "functioned as a latter-day public forum" and needed to recognize this de facto role. [5] This argument is key since it goes beyond simple free speech arguments and points to a deeper understanding of both malls and public space in our contemporary society. The central idea is that people need spaces in which they can conceive of themselves as citizens committed to political debate and persuasion. Without these spaces, citizenship wanes. Certainly not all states have made rulings like these, but this deeper recognition of malls as public space and the great importance of public space for citizenship should offer us hope. In closing, it is important to note that the Whitman Center has decided to focus on enclosed malls, not strip malls. The reason for this is straightforward: policies for enclosed malls are simpler and do not deal with all of the various stores under the single roof. Thus, municipalities when chartering a local mall have a great deal of say in terms of how the mall is constructed and what sort of functions it will have. This can be seen in the Bridgewater Mall in Somerville, New Jersey. The town itself required the construction of the community-function rooms discussed above. There is no reason to believe that only the local stores and private management companies need to call the shots. Local citizens and politicians have leverage they can use to construct malls along more democratic lines. Conclusion Though this report has stressed current trends within planning and politics which offer hope, it is not intended to ignore the fact that malls are still predominantly private commercial space. We agree with the overwhelming voice of critics that malls have conceived of people less as citizens and more as consumers (see, among other works, Variations on a Theme Park). But if we want to offer any sense of a different future for our suburban landscape and social geography, we have a two-fold task: to design malls that offer varied functions and find contemporary tendencies whereby private space is converted to civic space. Only then can our public space promote democratic ideals and stronger citizenship. Notes 1. Quoted in David Finkel, "Mall is Beautiful," Washington Post Magazine, December 10, 1995, p. 31. 2. See here the report of the Project for Public Spaces entitled "The Center for Rebuilding Communities: A Concept for Discussion." It should be noted that PPS does not believe malls are hopeful sights of democratic public life. 3. For information regarding the decline of people going to malls, see The New York Times, August 30, 1992, p. V5. 4. See here Witold Rybczynski, City Life (New York: Scribner's, 1995), p. 209. 5. Nelson BOCK and Patricia Lawless-Avelar, Petitioners, v. WESTMINSTER MALL COMPANY, No. 90SC433, Supreme Court of Colorado, En. Banc. October 7, 1991. Rehearing denied Nov. 4, 1991. Return to Community Index |
