Strip malls weren't the best idea... You know what is a good idea? Supporting Shortcut Documentaries on Patreon! / shortcutdocumentaries If you want you could also buy me a coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/shortcut...
Great video! I see some people say that we can improve transit and walkability while maintaining the status quo for cars: I don’t think it’s possible, and the size of parking lots in strip malls exasperates this. As you shared, these lots spread things apart and make walking and cycling distance much larger than they need to me. Even worse, the parking lots sets the stores back from the road, creating a long and unpleasant walk to get to them.
Here in south east asia parking spaces are mainly reserved for motorcycle, & cars are parked in a multi floored building near malls, so malls here have garden centers, fountains, and huge outdoor spaces perfect for a date & family time.
To be fair, it was pretty easy to distinguish between the Texas and Illinois pictures. I called it that something was up. Texas in bright and Illinois is dark and gloomy
Ugly and strange buildings. Who are the architects behind this? This takes up a lot of space. In Norway - where I live, we also have fairly large shopping centers - but they have car parks under or in their own building and the department store itself is on several floors - which requires much less space. In addition, there are usually a large number of bus routes in the area or track solutions.
America a big country and land for the most part is cheaper that paying for all the extra engineering that goes into underground parking or multilevel shopping centers. Only in big cities do you see underground parking in America. It is just much easier to build outward. Everything follows the path of least resistance. In America that means sprawling outward is the path of least resistance.
what could solve everything is just to have all parking underground. however i'm sure the main drawback to that would be underground parking garage costs. lol but that way we could still have our cars and just go up to ground level to experience pure walkability. underground roads would help too. imagine if most roads and parking were underground. that would save significant space for ground level activities
It's a commun thing in Morocco, mainly our neighborhoods are not car centric and we have stores and shopping in first floor and other floors are for apartments, even in single family houses we have the right to open a shop or a business in our garages, the bonus is that most of new buildings don't get the permission of construction if they don't have an under ground parking, so people at the end have the choice, if they want a single family home they can have it and if they want an apartment they can have it and in both situations shops and businesses will be a short distance from ur house. U can check google earth, check cities like Tangier, Tetouan, Rabat( it has more one family houses than apartments but still not very car centric) or Casablanca ( which is a metropol of more then 5m people)
imagine if we decided to link those underground cars together, for efficiency! and maybe we'd make them a bit bigger, so they could fit more people in them per underground car. everyone who takes the same trip could pool their gas money, say $2-ish per ride. and we could even name or color-code the various... hm. what would you call something like that... idk, a wagon train, but for cars, and underground? Hell, maybe make it electric, cheaper that way right?
Above ground works too. A lot of newer high rise towers in Houston are doing that to leave street level for business and it makes it so no apartment or office is above the first few levels of parking so everyone has a nicer view.
2:15 What on Earth is that? A street between a 300-lane freeway and an elevated freeway? I'm guessing there's another street hidden on the other side of the elevated freeway as well. EDIT: Sorry, this looks like a really good video, but had to switch off. I'm trying to listen to what you're saying, but the unnecessary "doo DOO, doo DOOO doooo, doo DOO doo DOOO doooo" music's driving me insane.
I know you switched the images between Texas and Illinois because the Texas one has red lines at the rear of the parking spaces since so many Texans drive massive trucks that wouldn't fit in that space signaling your truck bed must fit in this area. Of course now in Illinois we see more and more massive trucks for some God-awful reason.
I don't think abandoning strip malls and car centric design will do much to encourage local identity in design. Prewar downtowns don't typically look that different from each other, the main differences being locally available building materials. Modern construction supply chains are much larger than they used to be and 5 over 1 construction looks the same everywhere. Efficient designs are likely to be refused over and over.
Historically, local vernacular architecture not only used local materials but also accounted for the local climate. In the mid- to late 20th century we began to build ignoring local climate and assuming cheap and abundant energy could handle all the lighting, heating, and cooling needs of buildings. I suspect that the climate crisis will encourage a return to the buildings that use architectural features to reduce heating and/or cooling needs in the local climate.
I don't agree. Smaller, fine grained architecture will look "plain" but it is more available for interesting changes. Older suburbs actually look more interesting because multiple owners will renovate, repair, and replace to their personal tastes. This adds variety within limits. Smaller commercial spaces can be made unique by successive landlords, or tenants that make the space personal to them. Day 1 it may look similar to everything else, but over time it will get that unique character that everything old gets. Strip malls, chains, and big box stores look the same as each other, and often when they are fixed up, they do every single one across the country adding to this "nowhere" feeling every strip mall has. My downtown may be similar to yours, but it has a sense of community that is unique because it's made up of smaller businesses, with people who care running them and shopping at them. Home Depot, Outback Steakhouse, and Starbucks don't have that, they feel sterile, like a Disneyland version of a hardware store, a real steakhouse, or a local cafe. They are not a hardware store, a steak house or a local cafe. They are mega corporations selling the idea of those things in the hope people will accept the comfort of sameness and the light feeling they are in truly real places that should matter to them, but unconsciously I think people are aware they are at a non-place. People say people in the city are cold, and disregard others, but when I go into a local cafe I always feel like I can chat with the people beside me. Starbucks never feels like that, and nobody really wants to talk to other people.
