Trends: Getting Centered
(Published in Inland Empire Magazine—January 2006)
Since World War Two, Americans have planted their stakes in the burgeoning suburbs. The promise of green grass and privacy was irresistible to those fed up with city life. For others, the new developments offered an exciting, contemporary alternative to rural boredom.
But the rush always had a certain schizoid quality: even as we gobbled up tract housing, we lamented the lost virtues of small-town life. Long commutes became the rule, along with endless driving to shopping malls and Little League fields. Many found that suburban life brought an unexpected isolation. They watched their neighbors disappear behind automatic garage doors, and wondered: is this all there is?
An emphatic answer to that question has come from the thinkers at the Urban Land Institute. A non-profit organization with offices in Washington D.C. and London, ULI has helped revive the idea of the town center as a planning model.
Imagine living in an environment where home, business, shopping and entertainment can all be accessed on foot. Sounds Utopian, till one considers this salient statistic: two-thirds of Americans have no school-age children. They might be willing to give up that half-acre lot for a more integrated lifestyle.
In the town-center model, mixed-used development replaces sterile, homogeneous zoning. Open-air “lifestyle centers” replace the insular shopping mall. Multi-story shops and markets replace gargantuan edge-of-town retailers. It’s a winning way to revitalize sagging downtowns—for cities that can attract the right tenants and clientele.
Another approach is to build it from scratch. One ULI case study is San Elijo Hills in the San Diego County enclave of San Marcos. At the core of this new 1,920-acre community is the San Elijo Hills Town Center—with school, library and live/work units arranged around a town square.
It’s Main Street America, all over again. And, if the visionaries at ULI are right—it’s the future.
www.sanelijohills.com
www.uli.org
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