Traditional malls now harder sells

[orulz]

I've seen a few examples where developers try to market their shopping centers as urban, pedestrian friendly, and mixed-use, and they may seem be so at first, but after closer inspection they come up short, and end up building nothing more than another poorly disguised suburban shopping center.

I just took a bike ride to the North Hills shopping center in Raleigh, NC under construction since some time last year. While it is indeed a much more efficient use of space than the traditional shopping mall, and has it has a hidden parking garage which is nice, my impression is that it does not fit with its surroundings. To the west and north, there is nothing but a wide expanse of suburban-style houses under a canopy of trees. North Hills' internal street network does not appear to match with the streets in the neighborhood at all. It also claims to be pedestrian friendly, and while that may be the case for people walking around once they've parked their cars, and will definitely be so for people who live in the condos built above the stores, it does not seem to have any thing to facilitate or encourage pedestrians coming in from the outside. From the street, it just looks like a strip mall/indoor mall half-breed. There was also not a single bicycle rack to be found.

This used to be a traditional indoor mall that fell out of style and into disuse. Built in the 1960s, it was the closest mall to downtown, but even so it's still a good two miles away. It is also not within walking distance of the regional rail transit station that TTA is planning on constructing. While this new development will at least be an aesthetic improvement over the old eyesore, any proclaimed benefits beyond that are dubious. If a self-contained urban community grows around the mall in the place of the existing residential areas, then I'll gladly eat crow pie, but it just seems too unlikely. At the moment, this project reeks of developers wooing the zoning boards and city council with big words and fancy presentations, with no intention of actually delivering a pedestrian friendly facility.