Big Empty Box - City Planning

Strip malls are the bane of the American Suburb. Fayetteville, a poorly planned city near where I grew up has grown four fold in the past decade since I lived there. In the process they have created one of the ugliest stretches of suburban landscape I can imagine. As the city grew, more strip malls were added, and gradually they have stretched down Hwy 85 unabated. A lot of stores have opted to exit their old building in hope of greater capitalistic opportunities in the new ones being built. As a result, Fayetteville is home to a slush of empty strip malls.

Julia Christensen is studying the issue of reuse of this space as it becomes vacant all over the world. She's documenting these buildings as they get their second start as something new. It's an interesting testament to the notion of a growing community. I'd still prefer though if spaces like these were just better planned so that stores, by virtue of their location and their design & organization within the context of a city, have no need to move to a new store simply because it's new. This seems like it should be such an easy design problem to solve.