I severely dislike rick caruso, but he's undoubtedly important.

"Our present-day cities are already obsolete and are threatening to engulf the entire countryside, permanently destroying vast areas of our best food-producing land. Victory City™ is the wave of the future. It's an entire city all under one roof, to be built and operated by private enterprise alone. There will not be just one, but many such cities throughout the entire world. Boasting no crime, no pollution, and no over-crowding, Victory City is a veritable utopia for those who've grown weary of trying to find solutions to today's urban problems."

"Called 'malls without walls,' these regeneration schemes are privately owned and privately policed. Rics found that the ownership and control of public realm is shifting from the public to the private sector, replicating patterns not seen since the early Victorian era - when private landlords owned and managed vast swaths of cities. . . . But Roy Coleman, a lecturer in criminology and sociology at Liverpool University, says: 'The rules for the newly privatised city centre fabricate an ideal citizen - aspirational in consumption and thinking big with urban pride. This is depicted as no ordinary regeneration because Liverpool people 'possess so much passion, so much pride and such a desire to shop'.' Developments based on such a vision silence other aspects of city life, he says. . . . 'modernising agenda appears here to mean a fabrication of urban 'bustle' that is rooted in enclaves that speak to a middle-class desire for inoculation from the signs of decay, disorder and inequality.'"

"Sheffield’s former central fire station will soon be demolished to make way for redevelopment. This is a major part of the Sevenstone plan for the city centre, which will bring a greater number of shops into the empty spaces via a half billion pound mixture of Liverpool One outdoor style shopping complexes and more familiar American Mall style structures. The monetary and civic values of this project are highly debatable. As of now, however, only demolition of the fire station will take place, as the development has stalled indefinitely. Once the fire station has gone, Sheffield city centre will be left with a giant hole. . . . Under the fire station is a block designed solely for catastrophe. Constructed as the command centre in the case of nuclear war, this is a massive concrete, climate controlled war room from which the remains of the city could be overseen. . . . Regeneration follows a similar disaster narrative." (via danched; tho, most new ones here are also "malls w/o walls")

mindboggling in a fantastic way. the language is a bit odd at times and the initial set-ups induce a fair amount of headscratchery, but sit through to the end: it's like sesame street animators plus nieuwenhaus and non-crazy new urbanists in one huge ball of WHY NOT? (via danched)

didn't realize the westfield chain had an outpost in london. unsurprising, I guess. I'll admit it, I find some of their layouts interesting and I rather like the century city one. (more appealing to me that caruso's "the grove" at least)