Can you build main streets in the suburbs? 

One key feature of actual downtowns is that they typically include places that are not primarily businesses. Usually there are parks, government buildings, churches, and local organizations that add value to a community that isn't easily calculated in dollars.

Every "lifestyle center" I've ever been to felt like I was in a theme park.

Lifestyle Center: a shopping mall pretending to not be a shopping mall.

I've only ever known these "lifestyle centres" as outdoor malls honestly, that's just what they are

These lifestyle centers look like the “outlet malls” built in Italy. They want to look like a typical central Italy village, with a “sampietrini” pavement, but they appear artificial when you see the enormous parking lot surrounding them and the motorway running on the horizon.

The biggest problem with these suburban town centers is lack of living space, apartments, and such. Traditional downtowns were designed to be places to live. Shopping was secondary. The suburban town center flips the concept of a downtown on it's head. The shopping is placed first and the living space is usually absent entirely. These town centers are basically just open air malls.

Meanwhile in Europe: Doing your shopping on a 1000 year old market square and going back home on foot.

They look like streets but they feel hollow and artificial

The best suburban main streets are the ones that have existed for 100+ years and it's very hard to artificially replicate that feeling.

In Australia, 'Malls' ( We call them shopping centres) Survive by having supermarkets in them

The so called "Lifestyle center" in my city is no where near a pedestrian friendly center like the onces in the video. I admire the lifestyle center that focus on pedestrians and not catered toward the typical suburban big box style center.

I’m 20 years old and i grew up in a small city with an intact main street and i really took for granted how nice it was having a place like that for me and my friends to walk around. I always hated the corporate and artificial feeling i got from lifestyle centers and malls. I hope it still continues to provide that invaluable and inimitable environment it provided for me for years to come.

Redmond's "old" downtown has evolved over several years to become a true town center. Just a couple of blocks from Redmond Town Center (aka outdoor mall), it is a true downtown as it is fronted by hundreds of apartments/condos, has restaurants and retail, a new city park and grocery stores, plus direct access to hike/bike trails that go for miles in each direction. There is a selection of hotels as well. It has all public streets and ties into the surrounding neighborhoods especially Education Hill. My only issue is a majority of the living quarters along the main streets are rental and so it is very transient. It also lacks access to light rail although they are working on it.

My parents live at a mixed-use "lifestyle center" that opened in 2015 and I'm always a little creeped out by it

I love how I live near one of these "lifestyle centers" and the majority of the shop spaces are still generic pictures of what could go in there. The theater is awesome but all the shops that are supposed to go around it haven't moved in at least five years since we found out about it. It's a glorified dead strip mall with a giant parking ramp.

Excellent use of graphics. (Thumbs up)

Where I live, we have one of these, but it also has the town library, town hall, fire dept, and an outdoor theatre/park plus apartments above and townhouses nearby. It’s not really a Main Street, as all the businesses are chains and the whole thing is literally removed from the main road, but it acts a lot like one for us in the community. It is public, not private, however.

City squares were common areas for it's citizens. It functions as a basic element of democracy. Malls have replaced the town square with a private area dedicated to only shoppers. In the process of securing the best location, commerce has replaced a valuable and historic public asset. At the entrance of the mall in my town is a long list of “don't”. Included in them was a ban of public expression.. You should do a piece on the public square...

It is also interesting when you have a city that has a traditional and very historic Main Street, a traditional mall, and then a lifestyle center. It gets even more interesting when you then delve into the General Plan and economic development policies that talk about where to focus commercial growth.

I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand. Our city has jumped on the bandwagon of lifestyle centres in the city centre. It is common to notice that major banks have designed brand new buildings with courtyards that allow the public to enter and purchase from retailers. There are a lot of streets that are now dedicated for pedestrians and trams only. Major international brands are now available and it is bringing many to the centre of Christchurch. Many malls in the outer suburbs are now beginning to struggle due to new lifestyle centres and online shopping.

I feel like there's a lot of "it depends" on this. The lines between "lifestyle centers" and "new urbanism" tend to blur a bit. I've seen ones that are no more than an outdoor shopping mall, surrounded by a massive sea of parking and with no mix of uses. I've seen ones with lots of apartments and office space, integrated into an existing street grid, and with nearby streets filled with medium-density townhomes and small-lot SFD. And I've also seen everything in between. I think as an overall trend, they're a definite improvement on the stereotypical shopping mall, but I agree they're not as good as traditional urbanism.

In England smaller towns have high streets. It’s a road of small shops and businesses. The road is literally called high street and sometimes is one way. But larger towns usually have shopping centres old large towns most likely have both

In the midwest, all the towns have main streets because they are all from before the automobile, even if they remained very small for a long time until becoming a suburb of some city later on.

I guess lifestyle centers are better than set back strip malls, but they never seem to connect very well with anything around them.

Good stuff, as always. The town I live in (Normal, IL) is a good example of doing a new "main street" in modern times right. They took about 4-5 blocks right off a major college campus and next to a train station and turned it into their "Uptown" area. There's about a dozen restaurants and bars, a few coffee shops, varied retail, offices, hotels, a children's museum, and a big traffic circle with a public space in the center. It hosts tons of festivals during the year, and is very walking-friendly. It's become the hub of the town, when before there really wasn't one.

I live in Markham, Ontario, Canada. They've been developing a "downtown" for the past few years in a relatively disconnected, car oriented suburb. It's taken a while, but with a major cinema, restaurants, bars and stores, it's finally resembling a pretty good "entertainment district" or "lifestyle centre." For some context, Markham is still a land of strip plazas. There is a main street (two actually), but they're small. This downtown Markham idea has finally created a space people could conceivably hang out at, en masse. So for that, I support it.

What an exciting surprise to see my home, Redmond, on here! Redmond Town Center was opened when I was in middle school and it was never as lively or genuine feeling as they meant it to be, though it has improved in recent years; as you could probably (maybe?) tell from some of the shots of RTC, it used to have a road going right through the middle of it, but they closed it off to vehicles a few years ago, which helped make it a viable place to stroll and do some leisurely shopping, though it does still have two big parking garages and a large parking lot, so it is still very much auto-oriented. By 2024 there will be a light rail stop at the edge of RTC which may help it grow into a more organic feeling place for people to be. Additionally the Redmond Saturday Market (farmers market) is also located at the edge of RTC, and its only a block or so from the historic downtown, which is coming together nicely these days. Redmond has really stepped up their planning game in the last decade or so and bought into the idea of mixed use zoning to revitalize the actual downtown. A little street realignment here, a new Downtown Park centerpeice there, mixed with ground floor retail and plenty of apartment units and it has really changed the feel of downtown. They put a lot of planning information on their website too (www.redmond.gov/891/Neighborhoods) which is organized by neighborhood. They have pretty positive stuff planned for the areas around the incoming light rail stops as far as shifting the orientation to make pedestrians and bicycles part of the fabric from the beginning, such as protected bike lanes, narrowing the vehicle right of ways, and widening the sidewalk areas. I just today read through the street design guidelines for the upcoming Overlake Village neighborhood (www.redmond.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1542/Overlake-Village-Street-Design-Guidelines-PDF) which will replace two strip shopping centers (one was formerly anchored by a massive Sears, which closed last year www.redmond-reporter.com/news/city-of-redmond-studies-proposed-overlake-redevelopment/) and a their enormous parking lots with a light rail stop anchoring a mixed use neighborhood featuring multiple parks, a ton of retail space, and thousands of housing units.

We've got lots of these in Australian suburbs, ever since they were satellite towns on railway lines (now suburban centres) with their own singular identity, before sprawling suburbia took place. Nowadays, many of these places have had a significant facelift in recent years, and I've noticed a bit more walkability, even though cars are pretty much the primary mode of transport.

As always, informative content. My favourite urban planning channel from across the pond.

I've noticed that in some areas of Australia with strong communities, they oppose developments of shopping centres as they would kill off main streets or if they are developed, the main streets become eat streets.. In many new suburbs however, I don't think residents care at all about their area and why would they? tmThey all look exactly the same!. It's an attitude of the more the better. They side with consumerism.

Usually spelled: "Towne Centre", insufferably.

The city I live in (Columbus, OH) is actually a really interesting case study in the evolution from urban areas to malls and back again. We had the standard story of suburban malls taking the retail away from downtown, which the city tried to fight by building a new urban mall downtown. That worked for about 15 years, until it's high end stores were poached by one of the first lifestyle centers (Easton Town Center) in the country when it was built along the outerbelt. Easton has sort of been evolving in to much more of a downtown type area than a typical lifestyle center, it's surrounded by offices and apartments and most parking is in garages. I'd also be interested to hear what you think of the new urbanist style developments that blur the lines even more between downtown and malls, where they mimic urban areas even more closely with things like streets organized into blocks and a higher number of mom & pop shops relative to chains. A side note, there's another interesting local story in how Middletown OH chose to deal with suburbanization. They actually used federal redevelopment funds to enclose their main street and turn downtown into a mall. When the "mall" died, they ended up tearing the roof structure down and rebuilding the streets.

It's sooo od from a European perspective!

Really well done video animations. I appreciate the level of effort that went into the small details. Cheers!

Santana Row in California is an especially weird one as it's right across the street from an absolutely massive mall.

I just love the work you do. The conversation you encapsulate makes me feel understood. I grew up in a small town, live in an important big/medium city and travel regularly, but your videos make me feel at home. Thanks for doing this what you do!

In my city, the city hall and what was *supposed* to be downtown (but never got built) is directly across from the General Motors Tech Center, so RIP to walkable/bikeable anything.

Fun fact: Shopping malls were invented by the Austrian architect Victor Gruen after the second world war, in order to create a center in the suburban areas. The first one of this kind was Northland shopping centre in Southfield, Michigan. He was inspired by the typical Austrian village, which has a core with little shops and services, and so he envisoned malls as well. As you said, commerce took over and replaced everything, and the mall turned into a shopping center. It's kinda funny, that through online shopping these malls now turn more into the places he anticipated - a place where people like to stay and spend time. And he famously said as well: "A car doesn't buy anything"

This video is amazing. I have a lifestyle center close to me and it has everything from a bank, post office, restaurants, retail, grocery store, eye doctors, schools, apartments and white picket fence neighborhoods all within a few acres in the middle of the suburbs!! And most of the retail are mom and pop stores too!

Great work man. Nice flow.

We have a main street in my home town. It's great, has dedicated parking on the side of the road, but only one row of cars near perpendicular to the street so it can have enough parking without actual parking lots. This also makes street corners wonderfully big and nice looking. Majority of the business are offices and restaurants. There isn't a single chain business until the street goes outside our city limits.

I agree with him on many points but Downtown Silver Spring is surrounded by a real urban area. It is built in the middle of an area that in the 50s and 60s had two department stores built along a street and was the 2nd largest retail cluster between Baltimore and Richmond, of course after Washington, DC. It also is three blocks away from a Metro Station, and has multiple bus lines that both go to downtown DC and into the other Maryland Suburbs on both ends of the privately owned street. It is a few blocks from one of the top 10 metro stations in the DC area (admititly geared towards suburban traffic) and a two story bus hub in the Washington, DC area as well as commuter train and intercity bus station. It served as the anchor for a revival of the rest of downtown Silver Spring. Downtown Silver Spring at one point also had more office space (built along streets that look like they could be in downtown DC (with 3 to 12+ story buildings) with side walks immediately outside. There are however a lot of parking garages, originally used for Metro commuters but now many are being torn down for new apartment buildings and offices. Mind you it is only around 40 square blocks of urban space surrounded by 1920s thru 1960s single family homes and low to mid-rise apartment buildings. The census designated place, according to Wikipedia, has a density of 9,000 people per square mile which has a density of around 11,000 people per square mile. Good video. Thank you

You make excellent content, that is both informative, fun and engaging. This is very important as it allows you to get our attention and teach at the same time. I always enjoy your vids. Maybe it the inner SimCity planner in me but I find your content fascinating and needed in a time when cities and infrastructure are in a time of flux and in need of change. Keep up the good work.

Love your content man very organized and informative!

funny you brought up santana row as it's location is next to the westfield mall, has no mass transit options aside from a bus station, and the winchester mystery house, a local tourist attraction. There's a couple other "lifestyle centers" around san jose but they tend to be more residential oriented but they still fit the definition pretty well.

I would love it if you could visit Melbourne one day. We have many "main streets" (we call them high streets here) such as the ones you describe like Chapel St, Brunswick St, Acland St (This one removed all car access), Glenferrie Rd etc that are in suburban areas but are full of life. However at the same time, we have massive shopping centres such as Chadstone and Highpoint which are some of the most profitable malls in Australia. It's quite a sight, as Melbourne is heavily car centric, however, as it has retained an extensive tram network, the high streets of the suburbs are still thriving more than ever and are generally the trendiest parts of town. Also I think you would love Melbourne as an urban planner. I see it as if an American city and a European city had a child together so it's not quite one and it's not quite the other, but a strange mix of both.

As a Sacramento native, I appreciate that you use footage from places like Arden Mall. It is not at all an exceptional mall, but it's cool to recognize the food court sign.

nice video. Finding the right balance between the three types of shopping experience is key to designing a city people really want to visit/reside/work in

I love traditional American "main streets" We kind of have them here in Australia but they are nowhere near as cozy looking.

Wow, fantastic video. I definitely can appreciate the work put into your videos as a creator myself. Great video!

Just wanted to say that your videos are fantastic. Great visuals, informative, and to the point. Keep up the great work!

It’s so cool seeing you walk around my city xD love the channel!!

I've noticed in recent years that many towns have invested in revitalizing their old main streets. Which I would much prefer over these, essentially, outdoor malls. Maybe with the shift to working at home, people will start settling around these towns with well-established main streets and life can breathe in them again. I live in a town who's turned their downtown/main street into a historic district and has done a lot to revitalize it. It's quite a nice place to be. I can walk into town and get a coffee in the morning before I walk back home to start work.

4:41 When he said "Downtown Silver Spring" I nearly choked

I really love your videos thank you for the amazing work!

Just wanted to tell you: I love your videos! Always exited about the new ones. Keep up the great work :-)

The Woodlands, north of Houston, fits this description perfectly.

What's your take on Japanese merchant streets that are often pedestrian only street with a covered roof? or the underground malls that are common in cities in Asia?

always love watching this channel if only to recognize the clips from sacramento! loved arden fair mall growing up

My town in NY has a traditional main street and its awesome. Its the soul of our community. I can't imagine living in a neighborhood like levittown where its just houses everywhere you go. Here I can walk out of my house and down my street to go to all the restaurants I like.

Not sure who’s your graphic designer, perhaps they are self-made, but major props! The Main Street and shopping mall street grids are spot on!

Great Video! We are big fans in Cities of the Future...Thanks for subscribing!

I grew up in Redmond! Witnessing the rise and gentrification of Redmond inspired me to look into Urban Planning, and that's what I'm doing as my major. Weird seeing places I visited nearly everyday growing up analyzed in this video (I used to work in Redmond Town Center).

Really great video! Love the breakdown

I play cities skylines and you help a lot

Having read through the various comments, I must emphasise that before WWII, the US had well-defined, charming, inviting city/town centres. When the automobile companies bought up the superb railroads and then ran them into the ground, they effectively paved the way for the development and proliferation of suburbia. The American government in the 50's provided huge incentives for motorway development that decimated city centres. With white flight from many urban cores, cities disintegrated. Although some American cities tried to revitalise their city centres in the last forty years, only the New Urbanists have made extraordinary progress in recreating American cities recently. They realise that vibrant, flourishing cities require high density development incorporating shopping amenities, businesses, restaurants/cafés, cinemas, theatres, housing, parks, and mass transit--effectively, communities based on the old European city model.

when i clicked on this video i did not expect to be learning about a town i live 30 minutes from! this was very cool, i had never really looked at the redmond town center as a downtown replacement, i always saw it as another take on the "outdoor mall" thing like alderwood mall's outdoor area.

I'm so lucky to live in a village where we still have a unique and beautiful main street with great little shops and restaurants/bars. Also malls, and big retail stores arent far off..

Once again, you have impeccably and thoughtfully created another brilliant video! Santana Row in San Jose personifies excellence in "Life Style Centres." Although I prefer charming, historic, and vibrant downtowns, I strongly believe that the creators of Santana Row perfected the formula. The only missing element is the métro station. We Europeans could learn from the Santana Row creators because we are witnessing the continued proliferation of American-style 60s' development in the way of strip malls and shopping centres. YUCK!

Great video! As an enthusiastic amateur, I love how accessible your videos are. Keep it up! It's interesting to see how elements of US retail design have crept across the Atlantic to Ireland and the UK. During the last economic boom in Ireland (1996-2008), malls (or shopping centres, as we call them) were built on the outskirts of nearly every town in the country. Now the main streets are empty, family businesses have shut down and the shopping centres are filled with soulless chain stores that have no personality. The atmosphere of small country towns has been destroyed. I hope as the West slowly moves away from mass-produced goods and back towards 'authentic' locally made products, the main streets will be reinvigorated!

I absolutely love old traditional main streets. I love walking down them checking out the small shops and beautiful detailed architecture. It’s sad that so many have been demolished for suburbia

I never knew I was that interested in urban planning or whatever this guy's channel is called. But now I'm hooked.

Great video!

You make such amazing videos. I wish I had the money to support you on patreon. One day!

Your videos are so great!

Love the Arden Fair mall part you filmed. Reminds me of a shooting there 20 years ago when shopping for Hanukah presents. Good times

2:39 I love shopping at Chonk. I get all my Chonky needs.

Always a fan of isometric design

There's a growing variation on this theme now, as well. In Denver we have places like "The Source" that are essentially mini, high end shopping malls that give the impression of independent craft, art, retail and food spaces...but it tends to be more in the marketing than the reality. They are definitely an improvement over the traditional shopping mall, but they often accompany high end gentrification in low end neighborhoods...read, "hip" or "hipster" redevelopment. There's even a rumor of one such construction replacing our only grocery store in what is already nearly a food desert.

Wow this is super informative!

"I feel uncomfortable filming here." Just tell them you are recording a review for your social media audience. Not a lie, they will roll out the red carpet for you and get everything for free 😁

Thanks for mentioning JC Nichols. From a Kansas city gal.

southwest florida here, place is tiled with these like someone was trying to make a visualization for this video "outdoor hallways" are a common design motif because of the cost of keeping any space cool and there's no urban context for them to fit into so they're a sensible option for the area they're all bad in some hard-to-define way except for the outlet malls

Closed malls are much better when you live in Canada and it’s snowy or slushy 6 months of the year. Just attach them to transit, as Canada tends to do. Also adding condo towers more and more.

You can always do what Carmel, Indiana did and level your main street and turn it into a life style center.

Most frightening that Americans think suburbs are best and most convenient living spaces

Love this topic. Great channel!

All hail J.C. Nichols. He's a quasi-holy figure in Kansas City, MO. Here, we worship at his feet at his internationally renowned "innovation in commercial shopping centers", the Country Club Plaza. We sacrifice entire paychecks for the right to eat at Cheesecake Factory, Buca di Bepo, and P. F. Chang's. We walk quickly past the homeless people on the sidewalks, who by law are not allowed to *move* if they're asking for money. We stroll along 'beautiful' Brush Creek, a waterway created by our lord and savior J.C. Nichols so that he could dump all the sewage from his sprawling (and racially exclusive) housing developments in a convenient location. We picture what it looked like when Brush Creek flooded the surrounding area in 1977, killing 25 people (of course, it only flooded on one side). We drive our suburbitanks back out towards our exurban home, rolling up our windows as we cross Troost Avenue, where the demographic changes sharply from majority-affluent white people to majority-poor black people (this, of course, a product of Mr. Nichols' racial covenants and blockbusting in the 20th century so that he could create "safe" and "attractive" neighborhoods around his outdoor shopping mall). Okay, I'll stop. Where's the "I'm going to pull out my hair" emoji?

Great video, subscribed! Yes it's true, nowadays there's no need for malls anymore. Today's demand is a place where hipsters can hang out and take hipstery insta posts. :D

Really enjoying and learning from your content, thank you! Your analysis of the contemporary planned and developed "Main Street" makes me think about the Special Economic Zone phenomenon in developing countries...where a lot of the goods that supply these "Main Streets" are produced. I was aware of these non-state/business sovereign zones in far away places but I hadn't really connected it to something under my own feet until this video.

North Hills in Raleigh NC is a good example of a lifestyle center. Literally started as a mall in the 60's but has transformed over the years into an upscale mixed use shopping/restaurant/park center with high rise office and apartment buildings. There's walkability, common areas that act as venues for events and music, farmers markets, and in general a huge variety of things to do. Ultimately the community still has the overall feel of a shopping mall because it is anchored around the shopping center rather than a historical main street.

EW road lanes are so wide in the us

"This street right here is private." *Anarcho-Capitalism intensifies*

I love your videos. Thank you, sir.

It’s literally a mall without a roof. Seattle is a city which has a major downtown and then many “urban villages” outside of downtown in its dozens of neighborhoods which each have their own Main Street full of apartments and businesses.

Lifestyle Centers seems to take cues from Disneyland.

“J.C. Nickels” “Spears”

Up here in Vancouver Canada, it seems that all of our malls are redeveloping themselves into mixed use high rises. For example, Oakridge Mall is being turned into a series of luxury condos with public streets and retail at the bottom. Lansdowne Centre is turning into the same in the suburbs, and Richmond Centre is turning the moat of parking into high-rises, and moving that parking underground.

Living in Chicago, nothing beats urban sprawls, specialty shops, scenic walks, and atmosphere going down Michigan Avenue or State Street especially around Christmas time.

Malls sold things at "discount prices?" I don't know what malls you went to...