The Gallery at Market East

When you live in downtown Philadelphia, and you're craving a cinnamon-sugar pretzel, Bourbon Chicken samples and a new pair of sneakers, who says you need to travel to King of Prussia, Plymouth Meeting or Cherry Hill for the mall. Directly in our own downtown one can find all these mall features at The Gallery at Market East.

Originally opened in 1977 as part of a redevelopment project, the mall has become a fixture on Market Street. The mall's central location makes access relatively easy. There are a number of bus lines which have stops just outside its doors and the mall is located on top of Septa's Market East Station. I see car-free alternatives as being one of the main factors to the mall's success. The Gallery offers mall shopping to many who don't have their own transportation and I can only assume this to be one of the selling-points when the mall was in its planning stages.

For the first eight-months after I graduated from college, I worked in a mall so I didn't think The Gallery would surprise me. I mean, I think when you've seen one mall you've seen them all. Suffice to say, I was surprised during my stroll through the urban mall. The standard players were visible: Footlocker, Borders, the Food Court, Wet Seal, music stores as well as jewelers. This is pretty much standard fare for the mall. What did surprise me was the produce market, fresh seafood market and butcher shop on the ground floor. When was the last time you saw a fresh produce store in your local mall? In this type of setting, I have never known of a place where I can buy cds, sneakers and a half-pound of salmon. I’m still haven’t fully processed my thoughts on the markets.

Walking through The Gallery made me consider the place of urban malls. How successful are they and what is their necessity? Should these dens of consumerism be the cornerstone of redevelopment? I see the growth of urban malls as being another layer in the push for renewed interest in our cities. You can’t bring people into the city without giving them a place to buy their goods. Also, what effect do urban malls have on independently owned shops? All these points deserve significant consideration.

As of right now, it seems the urban mall is here to stay. With the presence of other malls such as, The Manhattan Mall, Newport Center Mall, The Shops at Columbus Circle and Atlantic Terminal Mall offering easy access fostering greater economic growth, it’s just a reality with which we have to contend. It isn’t just the suburbanites who should have the pleasure of listening to Muzak.

Disclaimer:  I hoped to have pictures of the inside in this post but post-9/11 security does not allow photography of the interior.

A Change in Scenery

The majority of my summer internship has kept me in the computer lab of the Design School at Penn. I can't complain because I get to be in an air-conditioned lab, researching, and being around some the next generation of great planner. This past week took me back to a place I got to know very well during second semester, the Urban Archives at Temple University. I spent the spring researching the Crosstown Expressway for a research seminar course. While I wasn't going back to work on the Crosstown, expressways were still my focus. The main difference was I was looking-up information on an expressway which was built, the Delaware Expressway (I-95).

The goal of the trip was to search the newspaper clippings to find personal stories which could be mapped. I was amazed to see how long the controversy over the expressway lasted. Thinking about the Delaware provided me with the chance to think about highways in a different light. The Crosstown, which was never realized, united a broad community and they were successful in showing what the human impact of an expressway would be. On the other-hand, I-95, which was built, has become an integral part of current-day Philadelphia transportation network. Is there ever a morning where you don't hear about congestion or an accident during rush-hour? I didn't think so.

I am constantly torn over how I think about highways. In our modern society they are a necessary evil. Imagine thousands of cars traveling through the streets of Philadelphia had it not been for the highways. In one of my earlier posts, I stated how I believed in the human-scale and taking into account what the personal impact of projects can be. Highways are projects which can have one of the greatest effects on a community, but I just can't find a way to reconcile highways. With our ever-growing dependency on the personal auto, highways are needed. If only we could find ways to make them less intrusive. This might not be possible but one can only hope.

Adventures in Babysitting and The City

I am proud say I am an '80s baby. I guess most people are proud of the decade in which they were born and I think the 80s were no exception. Personally, I love 80s pop-culture - especially movies. These were the movies I grew up watching on VHS and they defined my early youth. Unfortunately, some of these movies haven't withstood the test of time and watching them as an adult can be a bit of a disappointment. The magic of a movie from my childhood sometimes does not transfer to my highly sophisticated 28 year old standards (although the Never Ending Story is a classic - 28 or 8, it is still one of the best films ever made). While we can't always look to older movies in order to re-live some much loved childhood memories, we can enjoy older movies for what they embody: a specific period in time. Older movies can serve as a time capsule, a window, into the social norms, culture, humor, and values of decades long gone. Ah yes...decades in which high-tops, Michael J Fox, and wood paneled station wagons were rockin. 

Last week, one of those "oldies but goodies" came on tv. There was no way I could pass on watching Adventures in Babysitting.For the sake of the post length, here is a link for a synopsis of the movie. The movie embellishes city life but there was an unintentional commentary of urban life in the late '80s. To the suburban teenagers in the movie, Chicago is seen as a wild place. A place where anything can happen and danger lurks around every corner. In essence, the movie satirizes the urban crisis of the late '80s, especially within the older cities of the East. Unemployment, recession and the crack epidemic all contributed to instilling a certain level of fear regarding our cities; the movie highlights the ills of the city.

I also believe this movie can serve as a testament to how far our cities have come in the three decades. Through the time, energy and money of various entities, we've started to re-claim our cities as places of culture and excitement, not fear and despair. In no way do I believe the work in our ciites is finished. The widespread levels of inequity are too obvious to overlook but "the city" has once again become a cultural center. A place where you go to enrich your life, not endanger it.

Even at the end of this post, I'm still shocked how a movie such as Adventures would challenge me to think critically about urban space. I guess inspiration can be found anywhere...even amidst high-tops and leggings.