Assessing the viability of lifestyle retail development as a traditional town center

Abstract

The lifestyle center, a recently emerged real estate retail product, is the culmination of shifts in cultural attitudes, real estate economic trends, and changes in the role of local government on the development of built space in the suburban landscape. In the latter half of the 20"' Century, the view of suburbia as the antithesis of urbanity, centerless sprawl devoid of the city's redeeming civic and community features, gained currency. Built to resemble early 20th Century main streets or town squares, lifestyle centers offer a counterpoint to the disaggregating effects of suburbanization wrought over the past half century. But, do they represent a true return to small town ways of living? Are they a viable model for giving a physical focus to suburbia This thesis gauges the performance of lifestyle centers relative to standards set by traditional main streets or town squares. Issues of publicness, mix of use, physical configuration, and community perception are taken into account. Regarding these measures, lifestyle centers are partially successful in creating a physical center and community in the perceived disorder of suburbia. However, the lifestyle center does not fully achieve the goal in the sense that it remains relatively exclusive and narrowly focused. Although derided as Disney-esque environments that thinly disguise their goal of encouraging consumption, the lifestyle center represents a shift in thinking, one that begins to take into account the role of retail in the physical and social fabric of society That shift, although incomplete, is a positive step towards improving the quality of the urban landscape in the United States.