Shopping mall crisis and a new perspective in the framework of the polycentric multiuse metropolitan model

Abstract

The suburban shopping mall acts as the core of suburban development on a low density basis and a large land consuming low density sprawl. This human environment has been criticized especially today, when scientists are warning the global population about the dangers of climate change. In the dynamics of metropolitan development, retail competition and changing client demands, the life of a suburban shopping mall has a time of growth, an apex and a decline until closure. Old facilities are substituted by brand new ones multiplying land consumption and dictating new patterns of mobility. In the perspective of retrofitting suburbs with the objective of sustainable human settlement, we need some strategies of change for suburban shopping malls. This paper will present the work of the city planning workshop of the University Federico II (Naples) to face regional housing demand. Following the New Urbanism theory of redevelopment of the shopping mall in multiuse urban development, exercises of urban design are being explored to figure out whether the epitome of suburbanization could change into a compact, high density city core. © 2012 WIT Press.