@uis @milicent_bystandr The architect you’re thinking of is a guy by the name of Victor Gruen.

The short version is that he was a socialist from Austria, who wanted to basically recreate the great walkable streets and plazas of Vienna indoors in Minnesota.

His views on cars, ironically, wouldn’t be out of place on a @notjustbikes video: “Suburban business real estate has often been evaluated on the basis of passing automobile traffic. This evaluation overlooks the fact that automobiles do not buy merchandise.”

He hated cars, and saw this as an antidote to car-dependent development:

"But Gruen had a grander vision. He wanted to re-create in microcosm the walkable, diverse and liveable town centres he so loved in Vienna.

"Part of his motivation was seeing how reliance on the automobile was affecting cities. In his classic book, Shopping Towns USA, Gruen rails against the development of drive-by shopping centres focused on catering to passing motorists.

"The original plan was for commerce to be broken up by numerous attractions like aviaries, fountains and works of art. The mall itself would be surrounded by residences, offices, medical facilities, schools and everything that made a community.

"The mall was inward-looking, not to keep people focused on spending but to shelter pedestrians from cars and away from their fumes and noise.

“Here’s the first painful irony, then. Rather than developing the new mixed-use centre envisioned by Gruen, the only thing built was the mall and car parks. The grand vision was reduced to a monoculture of big shopping brands surrounded by massive car parks, all accessible only by automobile.”

https://theconversation.com/triumph-of-the-mall-how-victor-gruens-grand-urban-vision-became-our-suburban-shopping-reality-172393

So the modern American shopping mall is basically a perversion of Gruen’s original walkable town square/main street in a building vision.

#Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #capitalism #cars #malls