

Malls, the Future of Housing? - blogimus
http://www.housingwire.com/2008/12/29/malls-the-future-of-housing/

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pkaler
I live in a condo tower in Vancouver, BC. I live above a supermarket,
Starbucks, dry cleaner, hair stylist, and Domino's pizza. It actually works
out quite well. Because of the supermarket, I only have to buy food for one
meal at a time. <http://www.metropolitantowers.com>

It's called New Urbanism and it was implemented here in Vancouver by the
former head of Urban planning, Larry Beasley.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Beasley>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism>

~~~
poutine
I lived in that exact building for a couple years. The major downside of it
and similar developments is that it's extraordinarily noisy from all the
street traffic. Made me hate buses with a severe passion.

This is the major downside to mixing a lot of cars with apartment buildings.
Many cities do this way better than Vancouver which is terribly overrated as a
city to live in. For instance in Beijing the city blocks are very large with
residential (schools, etc) on the inside and the major streets on the outside
with little through traffic. As a result it's quiet at your apartment through
the day in a city of 15M.

~~~
pkaler
There are a few ways to manage this.

The first way is to have larger sidewalks. This puts traffic further away from
the buildings and there is less echo reverberating up sides of buildings. The
sidewalks are larger in Gastown and deeper in Yaletown. Granville Street is
being repaved to have larger sidewalks, too.

The second way to do this is to make the first floor retail. Then make floors
2 through 10 be commercial office space. People don't have to sleep in this
space so sound doesn't matter as much.

I live on the 17th floor and I don't really notice traffic noise. I do get
noise from Granville Street on Friday and Saturday from the Christian Audigier
crowd. If I go to bed early on the weekend, I just sleep with ear plugs in.
Inconvenient, but not that huge of a deal.

I used to live in the West End across from a senior's home. I swear an
ambulance used to rip up the street at least once a week with it's siren
blaring to pick up a senior. Ear plugs don't help in that case.

The third way to reduce noise is to have better windows. The building does
have almost floor to ceiling windows and they are not the most sound proof.
The City of Vancouver needs to improve the building code with respect to
windows. It would save a lot more energy, too.

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bitwize
Like ohmigod, I was on the phone with Becky, Tiffany, and Amber the other day?
(My daddy has conference call. It's totally wicked.) And I was telling them,
like, you know how the mall has like, all these stores like Bloomie's and The
Gap and Hot Topic all under one roof? Well I thought, wouldn't it be cool if
one day we could just like, live at the mall? Like wake up, grab breakfast at
Cinnabons, and then shop all day? That would be awesome, don't you think?

Oh, who am I kidding? Mall housing -- gag me with a spoon.

~~~
sosuke
Two new malls went up in recent years in my city with housing built right in.
<http://www.hillcountrygalleria.com> has <http://www.alexangalleria.com> and
then <http://www.thedomainaustin.com>

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jeremytliles
I actually live in the Belmar development in Colorado that is mentioned in the
article. For the most part, we've been quite happy with it. With a Whole
Foods, restaurants, bars, public library, and many stores only a 5-minute walk
away, we can go days without needing to use the car.

You're definitely making a trade-off though, paying substantially more per
square foot than you would for older, traditional housing stock in the same
area, and foregoing space and a yard. I get the feeling most people in this
area will still choose the horrors of a 45-minute commute so that they can
live in a cookie-cutter home with a postage-stamp yard, as opposed to a
relatively small condominium.

The article doesn't hit this point very hard, but I also think it's important
to get public transportation into the equation with these developments. Mass
transit options are limited in this area, and I hate that I pretty much have
to use my car to travel to downtown Denver or Boulder.

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tjic
I personally think that new uses for old spaces is quite cool.

If you agree, you might enjoy the book "How Buildings Learn".

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-
Theyre/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-
Theyre/dp/0140139966)

HOWEVER.

The cost of demolition and new construction is much lower than renovation,
especially when the systems requirements (showers, plumbing, etc.) are so
different.

I feel quite confident stating that - aside from a stunt or two here and there
- we will never see malls turned into housing in any sort of massive way.

~~~
russell
Right you are about the renovation. Fifteen or twenty years ago HP bought the
failed Mayfair mall for a song, intending to get cheap office space. The cost
turned out to be huge because it turned it wasn't a single building. Each
store was a separate building with a common exterior wall. Among the problems
were uneven floors, so that a bunch of little shops couldn't be combined into
an office space. IIRC the remodeling cost over $25m.

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blogimus
Since one of the current topics being discussed is the vanishing shopping mall
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540166>), I've been wondering why there
isn't more of an overall interest (and I don't mean on HN, I mean in general)
in apartments and condos mixed in with shopping centers, like malls. Well, a
quick search found this article.

~~~
chime
Good find. Thanks!

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sharpn
Interesting article, but not very internationally-informed. Mixed-use
residential/retail mall complexes may be novel to the US, but they've been
common in Singapore (& I would guess elsewhere) for some time. I lived in one
a few years ago. Strikes me that it'll only ever be a niche market, except
where land space is a high premium.

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siculars
wow. this is brilliant. on the order of... nyc birlliant. i live in manhattan
and the entire island is like one big mixed use
residential/commercial/recreational mall.

hybrid is almost always the best way to go.

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ShabbyDoo
I live about 1/2 hour away from this:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Park_Mall>

I've often wondered if such a structure could be turned into housing. Although
the article wasn't explicit in making this point, it implied that housing
in/by malls has been purpose-built thus far. 2M sq. ft. is enough for 1000
very nice condos. How could enough natural light would be let into these
spaces? And, how would renovation costs compare to just building from scratch
after a demolition. What's striking to me is that it's like building lofts in
old warehouse buildings except that these "warehouses" are only 30-something
rather than 100+ years old.

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timcederman
Accommodation combined with an upmarket/trendy strip mall is very common in
Brisbane, Australia now. Personally, I don't understand the appeal, but I am a
bit of a sook when it comes to noisy neighbours.

Basically it appears to work well in gentrifying inner-city areas with plenty
of public transport and activities nearby.

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jmatt
This reminds me of a TEDTalk from a recent BestOf TEDTalks post.

The tragedy of suburbia - James Howard Kunstler

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dis...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html)

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samlittlewood
... and so the wheel turns - isn't this what used to be called a village? I'm
all for not having people commuting between single-purpose locations.

