Deft Turns of Phrase
You know, I just love a deft turn of phrase. I was reading this article on the inventor of enclosed shopping malls and, truth to be told, was finding it utterly uninteresting. Then this paragraph leapt out at me:
The shopping centers were even supposed to contain sprawl by rounding up all the strip development and corralling it into a single planned environment. But of course they had the opposite effect, hastening the demise of old-fashioned urban neighborhoods, increasing dependence on the car and, in the ultimate indignity, fostering even more strip development, like dreadnoughts drawing barnacles.
High five to Daniel Akst. Great imagery!
I always wonder when the Urban Planner types are going to figure out that people don't really want "planned environments" very much, and that people generally don't like riding public transit (because, as the Samizdata people discussed a ways back, unless public transit is either expensive or gated in some other way, it tends to fill up with people nobody wants to be around if they can help it, and because it's simply a plain in the ass (exception: If you live in, say, NYC, it's the least evil option. But still.))
"Planning" at that level is, it appears, basically poison to livability. It's possible that this is mainly the result of the specific plans tried, but I can't help but wonder if simply letting things happen organically might not produce superior results with less effort.
What a crock.
I have been to the Galleria in Naples, Italy.
It is an enclosed mall, and it's much, much older than 1956.
Public transit...tends to fill up with people no one wants to be around if they can help it.
The Canadian branch of General Motors tried to capitalize on this phenomenon with an ad campaign last spring, which spawned just about as much outrage as you'd think.
Here's the offending advertisement.