Category Archives: Durham

Baltimore, Civic Inferiority Complex, DC, Durham, Greensboro, Kansas City

Letting Go Of Being a Hometown Heroine And Embrancing My Role as an American Expat in America.

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I never thought I would ever live or work outside of Greensboro again. I’ve always felt like if I wasn’t there that the city wouldn’t figure out how to fix itself. That if my work didn’t have a connection to home or if it wasn’t respected at home, then it was completely worthless. That if I didn’t keep up with or seem really concerned about events going on at home, then I’d advanced too far and I’d become too big for my britches.

However, we all know that I’ve left home and I’ve been successful away from home, despite many setbacks and issues. You listen to me talk to you roughly each week in countries all over the globe. I live in one of the most international metro regions in the country and I’ve managed to carve out my own version of survival in that region.

Plus, just having thoughts in a black body is still revolutionary in some circles, especially in this re-hashed climate of high white supremacy/patriarchy we are facing in the States. And on a local level, in some jurisdictions, the pressure to assimilate to a certain idea of what blackness or what fill-in-the-blankness is that isn’t whiteness or cis maleness is.

What I also wanted to address is the need to let go of a lot of these ideas. For the last two and a quarter years, I’ve been trying to live in two places at once. I’ve been trying to be home and yet not be home. I’ve also felt like not just an expat, but an exile.

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For those two and a quarter years and honestly many more, I’ve fought feeling like a hometown heroine (or hero) versus an American Expat in America.

I’ve fought through what it means to have civic pride, inferiority, nativism and absolutism. While having civic pride is awesome, possessing either civic inferiority or civic nativity or absolutism is not good.

Additionally, I’ve battled the idea that when we say we want new people, but increasingly we as cities only want a certain type of new person. The elusive young professional. The old retiree. Someone that looks like us and that can remember this obscure power outage that resulted in having to kill ten rats in 48 hours by you, but your friends and neighbors can recite the same story.

Or we fight all new people coming in. Whether it’s failing to fund new airports and train stations, or the extreme of banning certain people from entering the country or just making people “pay their dues” and say the “right things”, we fail to realize that closed systems eventually die out. Yes, with the right spark, they can continue on in infinity doing the same things, but it’s old energy. Or new energy gets sucked in, never to come back out again.

No part of me wants to be a closed system. In fact, a closed system chokes me to death.

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This year’s election has shown me that if people step up, there are metro areas that will vote for them to win. If people know where to sign up to run, if they are willing to canvass neighborhoods, hit wallets for small donations and take the heat from those who may not like their style of politics despite sharing a letter next to their name when it comes to party designation, people can do it.

I know I’m encouraged to get my name in the ring. However, it will be a few years from now and it will be where I’m currently living, which may or may not be Baltimore, but it won’t be Greensboro.

For it to be Greensboro, a lot has to change. We need to stop believing that gentrification, of downtown, of Revolution Mill, of other neighborhoods yet to be “discovered” or brought back to life will save us. We need more black, brown and Asian faces in our nonprofit sector and definitely more Latinx and Asian faces in political positions.

Yes, for the next four years our council will be majority women and will be without white men. However, how will we vote on things like corporate incentives, police oversight and transit?

Plus, I need to feel like that I’m ok as a single or single-without-child couple in the city. Although my mom has been great about not asking me for grandchildren, and encouraging me to find a partner who is a good friend first, others directly or casually ask me about this and yes, it hurts. Also, I was the student/girl who didn’t act out or try new things or go outside the box. It’s weird that some of my more “adventurous” classmates, are settled down and more conservative and sometimes more judgmental than I was even in my worse days of being the “Golden Child”.

I need everything surrounding my dad and how he’s no longer here and the house is no longer there to not hurt. I want to mark his grave, but I also want to be doing well. A lot of this travel and moving is for survival. So I don’t end up following in his footsteps.

Lastly, I need artists to be 100% supported. I need Black lives to matter, no matter how uncomfortable that process in making them all matter is. I need us to support fully all kinds of small business ventures.

And finally, I need us to not bully or belittle each other for choosing to be in service. I need us to realize that the truth is negative sometimes. Life is negative sometimes. But as long as we are still living, there’s that wonderful magnetism that comes when the positive and negative dance together and we let them dance together.

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Nine years ago, I moved home from Raleigh because I believed I could come home and make a difference and start my lifelong dream of being mayor of the city.

However, that’s been thwarted because I don’t believe that in my current state of being, notwithstanding the moves, I don’t think I could win. I’m too radical. I care too much about people. I think we should spend money on other things besides corporations and development schemes.

Additionally, I don’t think the kind of partner that would love me for all of me, leadership and all, exists there and would support me. Maybe you have been sitting back afraid of getting your foot in the door. Maybe you don’t live downtown and I’ve been expecting you to be there all these years, yet you check all the other boxes and understand why my life’s work is important to me. Right now, I feel like you live somewhere else (Hopefully somewhere in D.C or Baltimore or in between ;)).

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One last word. I am proud of the fact that I decided to see what’s outside of my hometown. I still love it, even when it doesn’t love me back. I left Kansas City far too soon and it was just starting to crank up and be great and I miss it. However, I don’t see where I would fit in out there either and I need an airport that works better for the nature of my work now. D.C. is just not where people go when they want to start new things and “bootstrap”. Baltimore is making sure I’m sleeping and eating, but I might need to move on from there too at some point.

I WILL ALWAYS CARE ABOUT ALL THOSE PLACES.

Raleigh and Durham too. It’s weird that my campus gets a Target, but the side of Baltimore I’m on can’t keep one. I digress.

So here we are. I’m a proud American Expat in America, lover of all things connected and thriving metro areas and eager to find a space to both plant a few roots, along with being able to fly around and see how other places are doing things.

It will only make these stories better and this space grow.

I’m Kristen. Seven years ago, I started blogging here to make sense of the built environment around me. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can find out more about me at my main website, www.kristenejeffers.com. Support this project on Patreon for as little as one dollar a month.

Atlanta, Brooklyn, Cities, Cityreads, Cleveland, creative placemaking, DC, Durham, Government, Greensboro, Housing, Links, miami, Rail, Raleigh

Placebook: The Little Blue Walking Dot

U.S. Cities that walk the most. Image via Governing and Fast Company.

Hey Hey, it’s Friday! And with that, I’m looking forward to a quiet evening of sewing at home with my mom and a Saturday and Sunday filled with who knows what else? In the meantime, I know at least one day of this weekend I’ll be a part of Greensboro’s blue dot from the map above. But before that, here are some articles to take you through the weekend:

The polar vortex is not keeping folks from riding bike share bikes, at least not in DC. Meanwhile, Downtown Miami will finally see the DecoBike stations that have been operating in Miami Beach.

More affordable housing struggles, also in DC. Evictions are still hurting communities of color and poverty nationwide.

The Project for Public Spaces has great thoughts on how folk art influences placemaking. I saw this first hand while I was on the trip that made me a placeist back in 2012.

The fallacy of having too many municipalities in a small land area, illustrated by Cincinnati and surrounding Hamilton County, Ohio. Meanwhile, Cleveland is touting itself as the next Brooklyn.

It’s always sad when a beautiful building falls into disrepair and is then threatened with demolition, this time in the Bronx. More modern buildings in good shape that have won awards are also not safe from demo in NYC.

The RTP region is growing period. Greensboro has potential growth in HondaJet, a new microbrewery,plus a new ordinance that could allow more microbreweries.

New BART cars in the Bay Area and a slew of new transportation projects in DC. 2.7 million trips were taken on transit in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2013.

Get to know the Metro Atlanta Equity Atlas, the first equity-based data-cruncher and map maker in the Southeast that’s user-friendly and free and open to the public.

And finally, a post-mortem on Bridgegate and why calling the police is not always the best step when dealing with mentally ill family and friends.

And because it’s the weekend, sit back and enjoy DC-based short fiction from the Washington City Paper‘s 2nd annual fiction issue.

Book Club, Cities, DC, Durham, Greensboro, Links, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York City, Wishes

Placebook: Wishes for 2014

Window at Scuppernong Books, January 5, 2014.Photo Credit: Kristen Jeffers

Good Monday morning everyone! I hope you had the weekend you needed to have. I hope that weekend includes not being frozen. I spent my weekend mostly at home, but I got out and introduced a friend to Scuppernong Books. Scuppernong has inspired one of my wishes for 2014 for great places, which are here.

Once you are through with my wishes and are all thawed out, check out a few more things that are worth reading:

Even though he didn’t make every Metro station, I commend the effort of the Metro Nomad, Stephen Ander. His original plan is here and you can click on Metro Nomad to find out how he actually did.

San Francisco and Minneapolis-St. Paul are booming and their surrounding communities are adjusting.

Cleveland meanwhile has adopted a more economically and ethnically diverse way of attracting new people to the area.

This infographic explains the American bike share movement in the past 4-5 years.

Michael Sorkin in Architectural Record writes a letter to Mayor DeBlasio, calling for planning to become more grassroots and equitable in New York with a nod to other cities to do the same.

A lot of these top-10 suburbs are really just small towns adjacent to big cities. Two of them are right outside of Charlotte.

Meanwhile, right here in Greensboro, we could be at the forefront of shaping the next phase of federal health policy.

Could this building be the start of a warehouse district on South Elm? Meanwhile, the warehouse districts of Durham sit in the shadow of the poverty that is still there and getting worse.

Former Governor Jim Hunt in Sunday’s News and Observer asks state leaders to raise teaching salaries to national levels and outlines ways that could happen in four years.

And finally, need to start a yard garden? There are Legos for that.

 

Alexandria, Arts Districts, Atlanta, Cities, Cleveland, downtown, Durham, Greensboro, Jobs, Links, miami, New York City, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Retail, Transportation

Placebook: Snow, Maybe?

Good Friday morning folks! Some of you are snowed in. Some of you are just cold. Count me in the cold bunch. If you want a good laugh, take a look at my account of what happens when we actually do get snow down South.

Greensboro Skyline covered in snow, January 19, 2013. Photo Credit: Kristen Jeffers

Whatever is going on outside, be safe, have fun and check out the articles below:

Harlem is on the one hand the home of the graffiti hall of fame and the other a hotbed of gentrification.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles continues its march towards more transit, more parks and civic engagement.

Speaking of civic engagement, with the performing arts center funded, Greensboro leaders are moving towards deciding who’s going to operate it. Oh, and mark your calendars for all the known street festivals in Greensboro this year.

A sign in Miami tells pedestrians to thank drivers for not hitting them.

Terry Kerns(@terrykerns) documents significant demolitions in Atlanta, some nice, some ugly.

RTP, along with other business parks, get serious about adding density and mixed uses to their properties.

Jim Russell(@burghdiaspora) hasn’t slammed suburbia as much as he’s encouraged and documented the need for people to #makeyourcity and how young people are doing just that.

Kaid Benfield(@Kaid_at_NRDC)came back and elaborated on his comments on traditional downtowns, highlighting the generational gap in views on revitalization. I left a comment, stating the need for us to remain centralized, even if that means being polycentric. Also notable is the danger of having your content syndicated without its proper headline.

I don’t think manufacturing job losses are the reason Big 10 college football teams aren’t having the best seasons right now.

And finally, help this Alexandria, VA woman #FindBen, if he wants to be found. When Cragslist’s missed connections goes artisanal. http://dcist.com/2014/01/find_ben_alexandria_posters.php

That’s it for links this week. Be sure to look out for my 2014 Wishes for Good Places tomorrow just in time for brunch on the East Coast.

Cities, Durham, Family and Place, Greensboro, Politics of Place

Coming Back to the Streets, Coming Back to Action

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Many times, it is very difficult for me to feel like I make a real difference in lives by writing. Are words are what people need the most? Don’t they need action?

Well, action is what they got out of me these past two weekends. On the weekend of April 20-21, 2013, a project that had been sitting under some dust, the Pop-Up Promenade came together in Greensboro. A partnership between Action Greensboro, Downtown Greensboro, Inc.,the City of Greensboro, and several community partners, February One Place will become a place in the truest sense of the word every Friday and Saturday from 6-10 p.m. throughout the months of May and June. Food trucks, musicians and who knows what else will show up and ignite this alleyway right in the heart of downtown Greensboro.

One of the centerpieces of this project is a street mural pattern created by graphic designer Nadia Hassan. Half-homage to the lunch counter seats of the Greensboro Four and half-octagonal M.C. Escher memorial, the street itself gets to put on a nice costume and be more than the place where we put our feet and drive our cars. Due to the complicated nature of the design, the city asked that volunteers come out and paint the street. I picked up a paintbrush on April 21 and helped with the first leg of the project. Yesterday (4/26/2013), other volunteers came out and finished the project. While the paint is semi-permanent, we all hope that this paint will last a very long time. I am also excited that this project has been on major local news stations and our city manager has filmed a video to encourage people to the painted street. I can only imagine what our weekends will be like this summer, with lots of people engaging the street and not just from the sidewalk.

Personally, it took me back to drawing Escher-esque patterns in grade school, doing volunteer work as a student leader in undergrad, and back to the basic core of why I’m a community advocate and placemaker. It’s fun to make something beautiful of out of a place. Plus,there’s a pride in doing something with your hands that changes the physical space. I’m not a formal planner or even a full-time community developer and getting a chance to do just that, even for just a few hours on the weekend, was priceless.

 

Painting February One Place in Greensboro. I’m in the pink hoodie. Photo by Cecelia Thompson

The city of Durham is one step ahead of us in Greensboro though. I spent this past Saturday (4/27) afternoon helping put on Durham’s Longest Dinner Table and Block Party, a Build a Better Block initiative put on by the City of Durham Neighborhood Improvement Services and Marry Durham. The goal was to block off the street and create the longest communal dinner table ever in Durham. The table was a good 1/8 to 1/4 a mile long and there was wonderful food and music all up and down the street. According to the event organizers, 669 people showed up, including a man dressed as Jesus. How’s that for divine intervention. The diversity of people was brilliant. And to think, the City of Durham took the lead, then the community organizations followed. Oh, and the neighborhood is in transition, but holding on to it’s mixture of people and income levels ever so slightly.

There were several personal tugs here.Durham was the first city I completely legally resided in, outside of Greensboro (my years in Raleigh were campus years, in which I only registered to vote and did not establish a permanent household of my own). I learned how to drive on my own in Durham. I rented my first apartment there. I worked my first full-time job there as well. However, I never really got a chance to learn and love Durham. The name of it being the cesspool of the Triangle region lingered so heavy, I was not surprised when I was mugged in my own apartment parking lot in August of 2008. My job fell through and so did several subsequent efforts to find employment in the region. I came home to Greensboro, climbed under a proverbial rock and didn’t go out at dark for months. The streets stopped being my friend.

 

Check me out towards the middle with the red shirt and fro. Great conversations with folks of all ages. Photo by Mary Beth.

Yet, here I was, back on a Durham street, eating a nice lunch and chatting with a variety of positive folks. What really touched me was talking to an 11-year-old. Outside of my younger cousins, talking to children doesn’t come easy to me. Yet, as I was telling another table mate about where I lived in Durham and how much of the city I missed while I was there, the young man and I were able to chat about living in and around the same place. I also told him about this page, so hopefully he’s reading this. I also hope that he gets the chance to know that I really enjoyed talking with him and was honored that this page might have some interest to someone his age, who clearly has an aptitude for learning why the world is the way it is. I have no doubt he will do great things in his life if he keeps up his love for learning.

As I bring this to a close, I look forward to great times at the Pop-Up Promenade and look forward to next year’s Longest Food Table. I also feel better about the action of the pen/keyboard. I wouldn’t have known about either event had I not started writing this blog and had I not had a will to be a public servant in some form.

Sometimes actions and words speak at the same volume.

Cities, Durham, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, Transportation, What is urban planning?

North Carolina- A Microcosm of the Nation

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North Carolina, my home state,represents a microcosm of the nation.

How does it do that? Land use,economic development patterns, and population.

Land Use

Within a 7 hour drive, one could be at the peak of a mountain or digging their feet under sea level. In between there are rivers, lakes, swamps, hills of red clay and sand and even a bit of desert. Both the Piedmont Triad(Greensboro and vicinity) and the Research Triangle have suffered from droughts, rendering many areas barren and some lakes empty. Contrary to popular belief, we also get snow. The mountains see it every year and in the Piedmont it’s been a welcome suprise roughly every other year. Even the coast has seen snow in my lifetime.

Economic Development and Patterns

Secondly, our cities and towns reflect all the major industry patterns of America. We have a finance capital (Charlotte), which has now staged a major international event in hosting the Democratic Convention. We have a Silicon Valley(Raleigh, Durham and the surrounding town/suburbs) which has created a major international network of technology and scientific innovation. It has also hosted an international event, the 2010 NHL All-Star Game. The midwestern former milltowns are evident in Greensboro. It struggles to recreate new industry, but has seen seeds of light, much like Detroit and Cleveland have. It also struggles with some sense of direction, much as Chicago is right now. Hollywood can be found down on the coast in Wilmington, which is also our state’s major port town. Some could bill Asheville as Portland, with slightly more mountain terrain and a little bit of bad racial history. Throughout the state major agricultural activity continues to occur, through traditional farms, organic farms and processing facilities.

Population

Population numbers tell us immediately we are All-American and all-global. Greensboro and Durham are one of the largest refugee resettlement areas in the United States. For many years, migrant workers have filled our remaining farms, processing centers and mills with cheap labor. According to Hannah Gill, a Research Associate at the Center for Global Initiatives and Assistant Director at the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Latino population of North Carolina has doubled since 2000 and it’s not all from migrants or from births. Black roots in North Carolina stretch from all over the state. I’ve not known of a place where we do not exist. I have country relatives and I’m not my family’s only urbanist. The Lumbee, the Cherokee and other native tribes have a rich history here, which cannot be ignored or erased. Indus Region natives are congregating around the technology firms of the Research Triangle. I could go on and on about all the people from different places, but I would be going on for hours. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there is someone in this state, either temporarily or permanently, from every nation on this planet. If they aren’t here now, then they’ve been here at one point.

One moment to address the The South’s ugly head. It lives in places throughout the state, places that industry left years ago, that poverty has ravaged and that leaders seem to believe don’t need help at all (at least not publlicly). There’s still our purple politics (blue in the major cities, red elsewhere).Lastly, it’s seen in our tenuous relationship with race as it comes to who who deserves opportunities to grow. Oh and let’s not mention school funding and redistricting and the continuous practices of sprawl. Amendment One. That bit of the Old South still makes us southern.

Which comes to my wrap-up here. North Carolina may be south of the Mason-Dixon line, but we are not ambiguous or limitless or lifeless, or all bad. We may not have Major League Baseball, but all the other professional sports are here and there’s always the Durham Bulls, they were famous, right? Rail transit’s on it’s way. The option to live, work and play in a dense area is alive, especially in Charlotte with it’s mainstream, full service grocery and downtown Target. I can always go down to my grandparents and plant a garden and get a feel of the land. I’ve not been mistreated and when I am, I keep on walking down the street. My job, my home, my degrees and my family are not harmed by one person’s act of hate. Yes, there are still folks that can say that, but so can folks in a lot of other states. We are not alone in needing to address residual race, class and sexual orientation issues.

At the end of the day, I hope all of you got a good taste of why I like calling North Carolina home. Also I hope you have seen why you may also be calling North Carolina home, no matter where you live.

apartment living, Durham, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, tips for urbanist living

Actually Being Urban #2- Finding Diversity and Cleaning Clothes At the Laundromat

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So your clothes are dirty. The hamper is overflowing. No big deal right? The washer and dryer are in the closet. Or maybe you have to lug them downstairs, but nevertheless, laundry machines are never too far away. Unless you are me and living in Downtown Greensboro, without the rental machines that cost way too much to rent. I tried to put it off, but I knew eventually I’d have to trek out to the laundromat.

Most bonafide urban dwellers either have machines in the basement or they have a nearby (read: walking distance) laundromat that they can use. Yet, here in Greensboro, there are no real downtown laundries. The closest one, near a gas station, with free dryers, just happened to be out of order on Sunday. (After this revelation, I took advantage of being out in the car and got a breakfast biscuit- another only-in- a-car-dependent-place “luxury.”) I then went to the laundry/bar near campus. It looked dreary, so I drove on past it. After circiling through another laundry parking lot where I saw questionable looking men(as a woman, I don’t take too many chances. I hate to label folks on looks, but these men looked like prunes and not in a good way). I finally settled on a place with older machines, but next door to an Ace Hardware store. It was a very diverse crowd, the machines were very clean to be so old and it only cost me $9 to do the bulk of my laundry.

As you can see with this paragraph above, there are a lot of issues and lessons when it comes to doing laundry here in the city of Greensboro. Here are the major ones:

-Non-drivers with no laundry machines are really out of luck- Not completely, there’s always loading laundry on the bus. I’m sure folks do it in other places. However, where I live, going to a public laundromat (versus one in the basement of a building) signals even more than the act of being on the bus in the first place that something may be amiss. None of these stereotypes should even be a factor. Going to do laundry should just be going to do laundry. Only, instead of owning machines, you rent them and not for $45 a month.

-Assuming that everyone living downtown is affluent enough to have their own machines is a failure in logic.- There should be more chances to share machines at my apartment complex. After all, laundry is for many, not just myself, a bi-monthly or monthly exercise. Also, if enough people have dry cleaning, a managed apartment complex or condo building could either operate it’s own dry cleaners/laundromat or make special arrangements with a nearby one. I think it’s great that we have the option to hook up machines, but the $45 per month rental fee for those who don’t could be better used to provide professional laundry services or self-serve laundry. Or even better, provide dry cleaning and automatically provide laundry machines, like my old apartment in Durham did.

-The laundromat is one of the most diverse spaces of commerce- I consider it a space of commerce because I had to pay for the use of my machines. However, this is more of a service than a place that encourages mass consumption such as a Walmart or even a mall/lifestyle center. Anyway, you can meet all types of people from all walks of life. You can also take time away from your busy schedule and dig into a book or writing as you wait for your clothes to wash and dry. It is this part of the experience that turns the laundromat into a great third space and what I enjoyed most about my experience.

Ultimately, I learned that there is no shame in going to the laundromat. I knew that anyway, but being in a place that cultivates that shame makes it tough. I did my laundry in 3 short hours(as compared to 5-10 when using home machines). I caught up on reading. I saw people that I wouldn’t normally see. And I got one step closer to actually being urban.

The picture above is the actual laundromat I patronized. Share your laundromat stories, theories and ideas on my Facebook and Twitter pages.

Durham, Photospiration

Photospiration: Find Your Cool In Durham

 

What is cool? There’s a new book about that, but it’s focused primarly on African-Americans. What about everyone else? What makes something cool? Why are people coming back downtown? This sign on the back of a building in Durham invites people to come to their main street and find it.

I just look at the buildings and think about how cool the mural itself is. Every time someone comes to the Durham Performing Arts Center, The American Tobbaco Complex, the Durham County Courthouse or Beyu Cafe they see this banner.

So I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to come back to this sign, but I know I’ll be cool nonetheless.

Photopiration. Commentary. News you can use. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more.

Durham, Issues and Ideas

Durham, The City As A Bull

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I couldn’t talk about Raleigh without talking about Durham. Durham is known locally as the Bull City. Looking at the logic I applied to Raleigh, I found that Durham has community characteristics that resemble it’s nickname. These characteristics are not so much in how the city is shaped, but how the city has been shaped by it’s people.

First, the city has a lot of spunk. From the early days of being the Black Wall Street and a tobacco and textile capital, to the current start-up culture brewing downtown, Durham has been a trendsetter and a city of spunk.

Secondly, the city has a lot of fight. For years, especially after neighborhoods were destroyed to build the Durham Freeway, the city has had to fight to maintain a good image. Major crime activity and the image that created loomed over the city for years. Now, Durham is turning around, with neighborhoods all over the city regaining prominence and new companies looking to Durham as the place that the want to start.

Finally, the city has a heart. People wrote Durham off for years. However, it didn’t mean that people that loved the city didn’t stay and make it better. While there’s a lot of attention coming to the start-ups and business opportunities, historians such as John Hope Franklin were able to base their life’s work there and build pillars of history, along with the people of Hayti, who never stopped believing and organizing their communities.

And come to think of it, if you take a look at the map again. There is kind of a bull shape in there. Using the Durham Freeway as the arch of it’s back, RTP as a tail, Downtown as a heart and Duke and NC Central as horns(partially symbolizing brains too) along with Northgate, Ninth Street, Southpoint and South Square as legs, we have a rough bull shape in the geography.

But then again, it’s really what’s inside that makes Durham bullish and ready to seize the day.

Durhamians (I don’t like the other term, it sounds like we are parasites), new, old and somewhere in between. Tell me what you think. Be sure to join me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. I’m also going to be in Chapel Hill on April 21st speaking on a panel on the reverse migration of African-Americans. Find out more about where I’m going and speaking this spring.

Durham, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas

Shopping Malls and Strip Centers Are Not Dead Yet

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Image Credit: flickr user steven.y

As much as we hate them, I still do believe there is life in our traditional enclosed shopping malls and strip shopping centers. When these facilities opened, they were bright, shiny, air-conditioned and convenient. Supermarkets offered everything imaginable under one roof. Some even had lounges for spouses and kids, so harried housewives could shop in peace. They had tall smiling Santa’s and community Christmas trees. They invited the community in not only to shop, but to watch movies, jam at concerts and walk around for exercise.

Yet, we fast forward to the present day and many are blighted. Others aren’t dead yet, but have been pushed aside as unsustainable, uncool or dirty. I do agree that many were built with a few too many unsustainable stores. However for others, you have to admit the crowd inside didn’t suit your fancy, so you pushed for a more upscale shopping experience. You moved up in the world and your money and the stores followed. The owner stopped cleaning and lighting the property. Big time developers no longer want to clean and air-condition spaces, so they created these fake main streets that the elements can hose down and clean off. Of course there are the Circuit Cities, Linens and Things and K-Marts that just sit empty, because of those chains poor management of money.

Yet, I also see a different story. Story #1 is my mom. She gets up early on the days she doesn’t go to work or go to the doctor and walks around our nearby enclosed mall. If she wanted to, she could walk there in about 15, but she drives there in less than five. Story #2 is the Fanta City International Center in Greensboro. While not as shiny and occupied as it was when it first started, it’s goal has been to create a marketplace for our many refugee and immigrant communities. It’s a strip mall without a known anchor, but with it’s Super G Market, does a great job of being a Wal-Mart for foreigners. Lastly, there’s that mall in Cleveland that turned it’s enclosed mall into a greenhouse.

As I said before,many of the so called new urbanist “lifestyle centers” take a facade of a main street, but space the stores way too far apart in the name of parking. Also, these “main streets” are just as much private industry as the malls, meaning no loitering, photography or even legit public gathering after certain hours. Don’t get fooled by the planters and benches in the middle of the parking lot. And oh, isn’t that a Macy’s in one corner and a Nordstrom way across two faux streets? These centers aren’t new urbanism as much as they are corporate greenwashing and anchors for a lifestyle that’s not so sustainable anymore due to inability for families and even working single professionals to afford their wares.

Hence why I say that people aren’t killing the mall. Often it’s shop-owners who want a certain clientele and the developers who want to save money and make big bucks. Once these two people have wielded their muscle, its then the community that often says, hey, I don’t want to shop there anymore. For those of you who say it’s gangs killing off malls, I’ve noticed groups of young people of all types hanging out at both facilities. A man was killed in 2008 at an Old Navy at one of our lifestyle centers in Greensboro. This was after a person was shot in the 2006 at the traditional enclosed mall at the Baby Gap. Both of these cases were private disputes that came to the mall, not a protracted effort for people to come to the mall and shoot and harass people. There have been other cases, but I count those on one finger and once again, not a conspiracy to kill mall shoppers.

To close my thoughts today, If the mall is dying, then it’s dying not because of the tired “people want to shop at lifestyle centers and they want to be able to walk around and shop” meme. There is a need for adaptive reuse of the existing dead mall structures. You can blend the enclosed mall with a main street feel, case in point, the Streets of Southpoint in nearby Durham. It provides a good weather and bad weather shopping experience. Also, these places are still not public third space, but cities and towns can buy them up and create third spaces inside and around them. Older strips can be re-facaded and parking structures and homes can be added to the wide swaths of asphalt that surround them.

So what do you think, is the mall really dead? Are lifestyle centers faux-urbanism?