Post by PatOn Sep 6, 8:15 pm, "Amy Blankenship"
[snip]
Post by PatPost by PatObviously it's providing a whole lot of something that people want.
There are 3 or 4 suburban/stripmall restaurants (Red Robin and Montana
Streak House comes to mind), a really nice wine shop, a big movie
theater, and some other places are on the left. On the right is a
Marshall's (which I walked through to see what it was (nothing
exciting), and Ashley Furniture, and a bunch of stores I've never
heard of -- but then again I haven't heard of most stores anyway.
------------------------------------------------------
It should be the job of government not just to provide for current wants,
but also have some kind of thought for future impacts. It used to be
obvious that people wanted to dump their waste in the street.
So let me get this straight. If I worked for the government or was an
elected official; I get to put MY morals, goals, desires, etc on to
YOU. So if I want to stop suburban sprawl, I could eliminate all of
the things I find undesirable but that you might like. So I could
just limit the mall by banning all womens shoe stores, women's
clothing stores, uppity shoppes of any type, health food stores, up-
scale department stores, strip-mall type restaurants and movie
theaters. Wow. That would sure put an end to the strip mall business
-- and regular stores. Oh, and I don't shop at "neighborhood stores"
so I could get rid of them, too. So you'd be happy with clearing out
almost eveything but Walmart, Target, Lowes, Hope Depot and Staples
because that's where I do 99% of my shopping? That would drastically
reduce the retail footprint, and that's a good thing, right? Or is it
that we should only keep the things that YOU like?
THat's a consideration.
I don';t think it's "governemtn" alone - that's too dangerous.
What the originally-posted artice didn't talk about was how much business
the place actualyl does.
Personally, I don't like the open plazas I've seen. Again, not the same in
this areas as strip malls. Strip malls here are pretty much exactly that -
almost linear in layout. THey usually have at least one large "anchor"
store, and often more (like teh one complex that cosists mainly of the
Super WalMart and the Lowe's, with some space on th eopposite side fo the
parking lot devoted to a fast food restaurant and some small stores, one fo
which is the pool supply store).
In all fairness, I was the one, not AMy, who mentioned "shoppe", because
locally, yes, the open-air plazas (where the clusters of stores are spread
out and you have ot drive around between them) *DO* tend to have trendy
upscale "shoppes". (I don't think I said "uppity", IIRC I said
"upscale"...) I also said that I think it's goofy to have that sort of
thing here, because a significant part of the year is *so* hot and humid
that it's nasty to have to go back and forth to the car - and that the
local one I know of has never, that I've seen, had a full parking lot. I
also was the one who said that parking garages with covered walkways to
stores are preferable in a hotclimte (and prob. also a very cold one) to
making people go back and forth to their cars to get from store to store.
I *do* think that open plazas with widely-separates closters fo stores are
IMo not practical (hence, "goofy") and yup, I do hate them and don't use
them. Again, tho', locally, not the same thing as a strip mall, whcih *do*
tend to cluster stores together (and have smaller parkling lots in between)
such that one *can* walk between smaller stores - so, if you have to get a
Father's Day card and tehn develop some film, i'ts not all that far to walk
from the card shop to the place that develops film (and tehn to a couple
good restaurants).
THat being said, I do think that AMy tends to rely too heavily upon teh
concept of governemnt regulation - on the very surface of it, it can sound
good, but in practice, gov.t all too often does *not* encourage creative
thinking, innovation, or, really, honesty and ethical behavior.
Do I think that planning could be done better? You betcha! But putting it
into the hands of gov.t is *not* an answer. If it were, we'd already have
better planning. WHat is the answer? Well, I don't really know, other
than that people need to look at situations and see what works well, and
what works poorly, eliminate the latter, and concentrate on the evolution
of what works well. Unfortunately, gov.t tends to do more of teh same as
has already been done, meaning that what works poorly is generally *not*
eliminated. ANd the only way to change *that* is to get better people in
office - but you can't get better people in office if voters prefer quippy
(or snarky) sound-bites to actual information, and prefer candidates who
trell them what they want to hear, rather than those who tell them what
they need to hear. SO, in essence, as with everythign else in a
republic/democracy, it has to start with We The People. If peole don;t
vote intelligent folks into office, and if people don't want to exert
themselves to put pressure on their elected offocials to come up with
better ways of doing things, then they've only themselves to blame when
things get done poorly - because simply voting for some schlepp, and then
leaving everything in the hands of said schlepp with Zero oversight, only
*encourages* inefficiancy, unintelligent choices, and even lack of ethics.