Rethinking the commercial district

Images from pages of Ten Principles for Rethinking the Mall, Urban Land Institute.

The Urban Land Institute publishes a number of great reports.

For many years, I've used:

Ten Principles for Rebuilding Neighborhood Retail. How do you turn a decaying urban retail strip into a vital commercial area? Based on the recommendations of 15 experts in development, design, feasibility, and planning, this booklet will help you identify the key issues that neighborhood streets face, determine the most effective ways to rebuild them and ensure their long-term competitive position, and set strategic principles to guide the community, public planners, retailers, and developers.

This one was based in part by studying commercial districts in DC. ULI has a new report, which you might think is not relevant, but it is.

Ten Principles for Rethinking the Mall. All around the country, both public agencies and private developers are rethinking the role of the shopping mall. The traditional indoor mall is being reinvented to include open-air designs and uses other than retail. They are no longer big fortresses with seas of parking but are being integrated into the surrounding neighborhoods. These ten principles will help you determine how to “rethink” existing mall developments as well as provide guidance when new shopping malls are being developed.

Shopping mall in Texas. Photo source unknown.

If you think of this report as on revitalizing commercial "districts" rather than focusing on shopping malls specifically, then it's another good primer for thinking more broadly about the revitalization of traditional commercial districts.