It’s a topic I can rarely avoid for long: the ups and downs of the American retail landscape. Originally, I had planned to combine this essay with the previous one, on the aged Venture department store in a tired community not far from East Saint Louis. Then I realized that, while not a meaty topic
My most recent post just went up on Urban Indy. It is essentially an assessment of the Mass Ave retail corridor near downtown Indianapolis. By most respects, it’s a lively, active urban corridor, attracting yuppies, guppies, buppies, empty nesters, DINKs, you name it–a contemporary spontaneous street ballet of conspicuous consumption. It has great old architecture,
In more than one previous article, I have explored the challenges that urban or inner-city church congregations face. Their aging buildings are costly to maintain; parking is inadequate in an area where land prices are usually high; the multiple floors and narrow hallways rarely accommodate disabled people; the higher rates of poverty nearby result in
At a superficial level, American suburbs have reached a point of inflection in terms of their dependency on automobiles. The past decade has introduced mandatory sidewalk ordinances within many (if not most) metropolitan jurisdictions, as well as an expansion of mass transit into many of the newer, fast-growing exurbs. But these initiatives are just a
My latest is up at Urban Indy, featuring the local nonprofit People for Urban Progress (PUP), and numerous photos of their many accomplishments as they approach five years in operation. Always an urban advocacy group (as the name suggests), People for Urban Progress has taken a refreshingly non-partisan route by simply intervening when a building
My latest post is at Urban Indy. It features the minor controversy regarding a building going through the redevelopment process in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods on the near south side. The building itself is architecturally unremarkable: It’s been completely vacant for several years now. It’s not in terribly good shape, and the owner
Earlier this past fall, I featured the accomplishments of the City of Kokomo, Indiana in reinventing itself over the past few years, after two decades of rust-belt, deindustrialized stagnancy. Civic leadership successfully elicited a certain degree of buy-in among its constituent, all toward sundry capital improvements, the likes of which most similarly sized cities still
Late last year I featured an article on the unusual Oxford Valley Mall in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a mostly upper-middle income suburban region of Philadelphia. It’s a distinctive mall because it’s simultaneously both low-rent and affluent: it has such high-end tenants as Williams Sonoma or Swarovski, but it also has Five Below, Dollar Hut, and
Three years ago, I surveyed the Indianapolis City Market through this blog, in an exhaustive three-part series. The venerable old building was in decent enough condition. But judging from the activity inside, the place was languishing, with less than 50% occupancy, persistent mechanical problems, and a frequently shifting leadership structure. Through my written analysis and
My latest post is up at Urban Indy. It focuses on a new proposal for revitalizing the main street of Greenwood, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. The town’s central business districts is essentially four blocks that project from an intersection–except that 1/4 of the original building stock was demolished decades ago for a parking lot.
It’s a topic I can rarely avoid for long: the ups and downs of the American retail landscape. Originally, I had planned to combine this essay with the previous one, on the aged
My most recent post just went up on Urban Indy. It is essentially an assessment of the Mass Ave retail corridor near downtown Indianapolis. By most respects, it’s a lively, active urban corridor,
In more than one previous article, I have explored the challenges that urban or inner-city church congregations face. Their aging buildings are costly to maintain; parking is inadequate in an area where land
At a superficial level, American suburbs have reached a point of inflection in terms of their dependency on automobiles. The past decade has introduced mandatory sidewalk ordinances within many (if not most) metropolitan
My latest is up at Urban Indy, featuring the local nonprofit People for Urban Progress (PUP), and numerous photos of their many accomplishments as they approach five years in operation. Always an urban
My latest post is at Urban Indy. It features the minor controversy regarding a building going through the redevelopment process in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods on the near south side. The
Earlier this past fall, I featured the accomplishments of the City of Kokomo, Indiana in reinventing itself over the past few years, after two decades of rust-belt, deindustrialized stagnancy. Civic leadership successfully elicited
Late last year I featured an article on the unusual Oxford Valley Mall in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a mostly upper-middle income suburban region of Philadelphia. It’s a distinctive mall because it’s simultaneously both
Three years ago, I surveyed the Indianapolis City Market through this blog, in an exhaustive three-part series. The venerable old building was in decent enough condition. But judging from the activity inside, the
My latest post is up at Urban Indy. It focuses on a new proposal for revitalizing the main street of Greenwood, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. The town’s central business districts is essentially