What Will Save the Suburbs? by Allison Arieff… Interesting, maybe some of these places can become “TechShop” like tool centers…
…Take as an analogous example their symbiotic partner, the big box store. As I learned in artist Julia Christensenรขโฌโขs new book, รขโฌลBig Box Reuse,รขโฌย when a big box store like Wal-mart or Kmart outgrows its space, it is shut down. It is, apparently, cheaper to start from scratch than to close for renovation and expansion, let alone decide at the outset to design a store that can easily be expanded (or contracted, as the case may be).
So not only does a community get a newer, bigger big box, it is also left with quite an economic and environmental eyesore: a vacant shell of a retail operation, tons of wasted building material and a changed landscape that canรขโฌโขt be changed back.
The silver lining in Christensenรขโฌโขs study are the communities sheรขโฌโขs discovered that have proactively addressed the massive empty shells theyรขโฌโขve been left with, turning structures of anywhere from 20,000 to 280,000 square feet into something useful: a charter school, a health center, a chapel, a library. (And, in Austin, Minn., a new Spam Museum.)
The repurposing of abandoned big-box stores is easier to wrap oneรขโฌโขs head around: one can envision within a single volume (albeit a massive one) the potential to become something else.
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