# Strip malls outside the US?



## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

samsonyuen said:


> Unfortunately, they are everywhere.



Hang on a second. If Strip Malls really do mean the type of Strip shopping shown below, then what exactly is the problem?


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## Nouvellecosse (Jun 4, 2005)

^ Personally, I wouldn't consider that a strip mall. That's just shops in a storefront along a major street. A strip mall does not have it shops right up to the side walk, but instead has large parking areas in front. They aren't pedestrian friendly, and are designed to cater to an automoble centeric lifestyle. And most imporatantly, true (North American style) strip malls are never associated with that kind of density. I've never seen one with multiple levels.


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## PotatoGuy (May 10, 2005)

^^ i was thinking the same thing.. but there are some with multiple levels, example:


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## rt_0891 (Mar 13, 2005)

Today's strip malls are the ugly big-boxes.


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

Nouvellecosse said:


> ^ Personally, I wouldn't consider that a strip mall. That's just shops in a storefront along a major street. A strip mall does not have it shops right up to the side walk, but instead has large parking areas in front. They aren't pedestrian friendly, and are designed to cater to an automoble centeric lifestyle. And most imporatantly, true (North American style) strip malls are never associated with that kind of density. I've never seen one with multiple levels.


Ok, the definition in wikipedia was a tad vague. I believe the photo posted shows what is known as "Strip shopping" rather tha "Strip malls". They do exist almost identical to the photo with parking in front in the UK, but most are directly on the street like in the photo.


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## mopc (Jan 31, 2005)

In Brazil, there are millions. São Paulo City alone must have some 30.


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## GM (Feb 29, 2004)

There are strip malls everywhere !
Just in my city, there are dozens and dozens of what you call "strip malls".

Some pictures found on the web of strip malls in Nantes (France) :


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## Sexas (Jan 15, 2004)

^^ Ikea is no strip mall! strip mall need to be very small located at the corner site and yes most of them are ugry.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

This is like the closest to a strip mall in Hong Kong which is next to The Hong Kong International School

Redhill Plaza (Tai Tam)


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## GM (Feb 29, 2004)

Sexas said:


> ^^ Ikea is no strip mall! strip mall need to be very small located at the corner site and yes most of them are ugry.


Ikea is just one of the stores of this commercial zone.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

GM said:


> Ikea is just one of the stores of this commercial zone.


But that looks more like a shopping mall than a strip mall. They look very similar to the ones you'll find in the US!


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## carfentanyl (May 14, 2003)

Luckily the Netherlands have practically no strip malls. They do have some areas kinda like stripmalls, but those are practically exclusively for DIY, home improvement and furniture stores. We call 'm 'woonboulevards' or 'meubelboulevards'...


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## carlisle (Nov 10, 2005)

Yes, this was a point I made before. The 'big box' shopping areas shown before are only supposed to be for bulky goods like furniture and serve a whole city as opposed to a neighbourhood. American strip malls will contain local and convenience shops of the kind shown on the British local shopping street, but in the same kind of architecture and urban fabric as the big box malls, or the Dutch example above. We don't really have strip malls in this country. A few small towns like Workington had a go and building something which was somewhere between a small version of the big shopping centre and a strip mall, but those tend not to have much in. Some new interwar suburbs had their local shops built in ugly modern buildings but their was still an emphasis on street frontage. In addition these local British shopping streets contain only the most local of shops, convenience shops, I have seen strip malls in America that go a little beyond this, starting to negate the need for locals to travel to the city centre for comparison goods like clothes, electrics and records. The government here are very concentrated on preventing this sort of small non-bulky comparison shopping from spreading outside the town or city centre, as in the British/European mindset retail is what the city centre is for and is about the main reason people go to the city centre. Centres would lose much of their day-time vitality if the shops were taken away.


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## Cloudship (Jun 8, 2005)

I think the point is that "strip mall" is really a relative term. The whole idea of a strip of stores with a simmilar or cohesive design with parking in front of them pretty much exists everywhere. What the exact makeup of those stores is depends a lot upon the economy and political climate - you certainly aren't going to be able to legally prevent certain types of businesses from locating in a strip mall in the US, whereas in other countries with more restrictive regulations may be able to. So no, the concept of a collection of shops is not limited to the US. 

What I wonder about is, the picture of the English Strip Shopping - what is on the left side of the picture? If that was a parking lot over there, what is the real difference between it and a shopping center with a driveway between the parking spaces and the stores? I think that there are two issues - one being poor aesthetics, the second being the movement of retail location from the city core to the outer areas.


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## miamicanes (Oct 31, 2002)

Remember, though... half the reason strip malls became so pervasive throughout the US is because warped zoning laws that are only now being fixed made it practically impossible for small service-oriented stores to be located anywhere else. Twenty years ago, it was outright illegal in most parts of the US to actually build something like stores with apartments above. OK, maybe someone with lots of cash and persistence could have gotten permission... but trying to find anyplace where something like that could be built as a matter of right, without months of public hearings and bribing the right officials, would have been nearly impossible.

I don't have photos handy, but Miami seems to have taken strip malls to the next level. Just about every new one that gets built in central Dade county now has rooftop parking as the norm (especially in Doral). Frankly, I'm surprised that nobody has built another one like Dadeland Station (Best Buy, Target, Sports Authority, and Bed Bath & Beyond stacked on top of one another, adjacent to a garage whose odd levels line up with the store entrances (leaving the less-convenient even levels for employees and peak Christmas season shoppers).


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## Cloudship (Jun 8, 2005)

Twenty years ago, no one really wanted to build small apartment buildings. Everything is now geared towards the developer who is looking for large complexes, which in itself is probably a big part of the problem. Few strip malls really attracted at first independant small stores - most were originally chains, and only after those moved on did the smaller places come in.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

I know that Israel has a number of strip malls as you go along the highways.


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## miamicanes (Oct 31, 2002)

> Twenty years ago, no one really wanted to build small apartment buildings.


They can't really be built anymore, thanks to building codes that become exponentially more demanding the moment you hit 3 units and/or 3 stories, or have residential and commercial in the same building. Things like requiring a pair of totally separate fire-rated enclosed stairways for residential users, and another pair for commercial uses. Or rules that 3+ unit buildings can't have parking lots that require backing maneuvers into a street (so forget about lining the ground floor with 3 or 4 private driveways leading to individual garages... Not Allowed.)

Of course, the Americans with Disabilities Act deals the final deathblow. Want to build a 3 unit building with first-floor private garages? You'd better make sure each unit has direct access to its own private garage AND has its own private stairs leading directly to its own front door, or you're going to have to find a way to squeeze two HUGE elevators into there somehow. And if the garages are deeded, but not literally connected to specific units with direct access to them, they're deemed "common" by the ADA, which means that at least one of them has to be twice as wide as the others. What? Give everyone a 20-foot wide garage and tell potential handicapped residents to park in the middle? Can't do it... if the rest of the residents can park two cars, the handicapped resident's garage has to be wide enough to park two (with added space requirements for handicap spaces) too.

That's why just about everything that gets built now is either a townhome with private garage and private stairway leading straight to the front door, or 12+ units... the A.D.A. basically makes it impossible to build anything in between by imposing the same requirements on a 3 story 3-unit building as it imposes on a hundred-unit forty-story building.


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## Audiomuse (Dec 20, 2005)

There are no strip malls in England. They have retail parks though as Jonesy said. They are not the same. They have nicer architecture and useually have another side to it. They are mostly furniture, bike, and sports stores.


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## carlisle (Nov 10, 2005)

It is most likely that the opposite side of the road in the British shopping street there is more of the same shops, but other than that and the different kinds of shops, from an urban design point of view there is no real comparison between that example and the typical American example of a strip mall. They are built in different locations with different histories and different policy contexts and different mixes of residents to different designs to serve different people in different cultures who go there from different distances by different modes of transport to do different things.

The one thing that strikes me is that a set of shops similar to that English street in America in the context of a strip mall would need car parking. Either strip malls serve an area much bigger than shopping streets (in the UK a street like that would only serve locals within walking distance, of about 1km) or Americans are much more car dependent that even the stereotype would suggest.

I think that many cases highlighting differences between European, Asian and New World cities are interesting and challenging, and they show that it is very difficult to draw comparisons for example between a shopping street in England and a strip mall in America, because the contexts, cultures and politics of the countries are more different than we often think.


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

Would this be a stripmall posted by Eddyk in the Small Town UK - Grantham (My Town) PLEASE LOOK  Thread?


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## Talbot (Jul 13, 2004)

Yes.


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## Jeff_in_Dayton (Dec 13, 2005)

Whoa! Those Dutch and French examples...very impressive take on big-box retail! Very modern...uncompromising....no attempt to tack on faux gables and such to make them look cute.


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## Jeff_in_Dayton (Dec 13, 2005)

Man, that pix that Jonsey posted, with the Pizza Hut! The lush landscaping in front isn't US, but the rest of it looks like a sort of downmarket suburban sprawl zone in the midwest or south...and whats up with that container yard behind the place? No zoning?


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## miamicanes (Oct 31, 2002)

> The lush landscaping in front isn't US


It is in Florida. But the architecture of that plaza (the one with the Pizza Hut and McDonalds) is dreadful, and the color scheme is downright depressing. It looks like something straight out of the 1970s that's just *dying* for a makeover... on the other hand, the plaza with the Wickes looks nice, as does the one at the top of this page.

Anyway, time for a few pics of my favorite one... America's first "vertical power center", Dadeland Station (entire threads have been written about it on the "Miami" board) --





































And their next masterpiece, coming soon to South Beach:



















... And to Coral Gables, about 3 miles northeast of Dadeland Station along US-1. This is what big-box retail SHOULD look like. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is actually the GARAGE 










Plus some more nice-looking Miami strip malls...




























Personally, I think Florida has just about the best-looking and nicest strip malls in the world. Compared to the stuff that's just taken for granted in Miami and Orlando, just about everywhere else looks drab and boring. There are individually nice shopping centers everywhere, of course, but in Florida you just get hit with oneAfterAnotherAfterAnotherAfterAnotherEverywhereYouLook -- the combination of quality AND sheer staggering quantity. Kind of like freeways in L.A.


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## r2 (Jun 27, 2004)

north american 101: 
strip mall = unenclosed shopping center
mall = enclosed shopping center
big box = unenclosed shopping center composed of a few huge retailers
outparcel=structure in shopping center parking lot not attached to shopping center

In response to an earlier post where someone stated that perhaps 'americans are more car dependant than you imagined,' you are absolutely correct. I'm not proud of it, but i live ... oh ... seven houses from a convenience store. And yes I will drive up there to buy cigarettes rather than walk the five minutes it takes. Why? Most of the time it's too hot, too cold, too wet, I'm too lazy, I dont feel like having to talk to my neighbors to explain to them that I'm walking bc i WANT to (americans have a tendancy to think that if youre walking in a non-designated 'walking area' such as a park or a lake that something MUST be wrong ... like car trouble or significant other put you out lol ... Im serious). Walking can get you talked about by your neighbors lol.


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## Jeff_in_Dayton (Dec 13, 2005)

This is really over-the-top.

Will they put a statue of Jeb Bush in a toga on top of the corner temple?








.


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## miamicanes (Oct 31, 2002)

> Will they put a statue of Jeb Bush in a toga on top of the corner temple?


 Why not? Jeb *rocks*. He's done more to make Florida great than anyone else *ever* has. Under Jeb, Tallahassee (the state capital) has been transformed from the pathetic ******* backwater excuse for a state capital it _used_ to be into a booming Miami-like metropolis with palpable big-city aspirations, ready to take its place as a _real_ city worthy of its title as capital. If nothing else, Jeb (a Miami developer in his day job) got his friends from Miami (who _literally_ thought of Tallahassee and the surrounding area as a strange foreign country) to feel comfortable making investments and building projects there. 

Twenty years from now, it'll probably be one solid urban strip forty miles wide all the way south to the gulf, and north spilling over 20 miles into Georgia, with a line of 'scrapers lining the beach worthy of Miami (apparently, plans are in the works for a major north-south freeway -- possibily even a real honest-to-god _Interstate_ that continues all the way north to Thomasville, Georgia before eventually merging into I-75 somewhere to the northeast). The last time I saw Tallahassee (about 3 years ago), I couldn't believe it was the same city. The transformation there is _unreal_.


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## Nouvellecosse (Jun 4, 2005)

^ I'd think the problem with a stature of Jeb Bush in a toga probably isn't as much about Jeb Bush as it is about the toga :lol:.

But yeah, I actually rather like the Florida shpping centreas from what I've seen. Of course there can be too much of a good thing.


In Canada, for some reason we don't use the term "strip mall", even though we'd generally know what it means. We call them "plazas". At least in this part of the country.


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## Bartolo (Sep 20, 2004)

I find that both terms are used in Ontario


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## DnH (Aug 3, 2003)

is a strip mall the same as shopping malls?
if so.. Sweden, especially the 3 big cities Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö i full of 'em.. In the outskirts and the suburbs.


its called "ABC-Suburbs".
ABC Stands for ARBETE (WORK), BOSTAD (HOUSING), CENTRUM (CENTRE?)..
So an ABC suburb includes one industrial area, one housing area, and one CENTRE-area with communications (a subway for example), and stores (shopping malls called "centrum")


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## carlisle (Nov 10, 2005)

In Britain, the main form of local, outside city centre shopping is the shops lining the main roads (usually roads fairly busy with traffic heading in to or out of the city, very little of this traffic has anything to do with the neighbourhood or the activity going on on the pavements), epecially in the terraced inner cities, as was in the photograph a few pages back. This will include local shops such as grocers, DIY stores, laundrettes, supermarkets, most local businesses with few chain stores. Similar in some ways to in the strip mall. But it will provide no, or very little parking as all the people it serves all live within walking distance (so the area is quite busy and vibrant with people milling about their business) of about a kilometre, and the shops will often line the street for up to a kilometre, or even longer in some cases. It will also included other uses, such as pub, bars, churches, community centres, librarys, parkland and so on.

I have drawn a plan to show what the typical shopping street would look like. Notice from the density, location and mix of uses (many of the shops will also have apartments over them) that is isn't really anything like the strip mall.










Also, nearly all the pictures shown that appear to be British 'strip malls' are either shops in strip mall type architecture but in the town centre, or big box retail parks on the outskirts of the town meant to serve the whole town or city. I think this is different from strip malls, which as I understand, serve a similar purpose to the shopping streets I have described, in that they provide local services within a neighbourhood or suburb.


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## Cloudship (Jun 8, 2005)

> In Canada, for some reason we don't use the term "strip mall", even though we'd generally know what it means. We call them "plazas". At least in this part of the country.


Same thing in New England. Shopping Plazas. Malls connote something indoors, while in the rest of the country a mall is anything that is centered around pedestrian areas.

In the US we don't have the housing density that Europe has. Most people in the US would hate that anyway - there is a bigger emphasis on personal space and privacy here (ironically). Plus, in many parts of the US the climate is not necessarily all that nice through much of the year, making walking around less than plesant. So there are other factors.

The shopping streets you are talking about are what we in the US would consider urban areas. We tend to segregate things a lot more - I think a combination of regulations as well as the typical western mindset - so that means that there is a lot more "spotty" development.


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## Jeff_in_Dayton (Dec 13, 2005)

The drawing Carlisle posted is almost a diagram of Chicago outer neighborhoods dating up to the 1920s or 30s....except the church would be deeper in the neighborhood.

heres an example (mostly built in the 1920s):


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## Tosspot (Feb 10, 2005)

Jonesy55 said:


> We have the big box type in the UK but that first 'local strip mall' type doesn't seem familiar. Most local shops like that are located in town centre high streets or in city suburbs along regular roads, both often have apartments above them.
> 
> examples.


I would not consider those as being strip malls at all. Those buildings in the photos are of a mixed use nature built on the vertical plane varying by land use. A strip mall has none of that. Instead, a strip mall is almost always a one-story linear building fronted by a huge and ugly parking lot, and almost exclusively accessible only by car.


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## carlisle (Nov 10, 2005)

This photograph, taken off Google Earth, is of a shopping street in the UK. Smithdown Road in Liverpool, which runs down the middle of the photograph, witht the city centre towards the top. Land use on Smithdown road is similar to my diagram earlier and as you can see the road is:

1) not just a shopping street but also a major road carrying traffic into and out of the city centre.

2) long, longer than your average strip mall.

3) well embedded (in urban design terms) into the neighbourhoods it connects. Wavertree (lower right), Sefton Park (lower left), Granby (upper left) and Edge Hill (upper right)

Smithdown Road, especially at the Wavertree end is also Liverpool's main student area which adds to some of the vitality of the area.

Also, that brown area halfway up the road on the left is now an Asda (supermarket, part of the Wal.Mart 'family')


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## goravens (Jan 18, 2005)

wow this is a really interesting thread! great posts carlisle! very interesting seeing how close the housing is together compared to a lot of North American cities.. do you have any ground-level pictures? 

The vertical businesses and horizontal housing roof directions makes for an interesting pattern


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## satama (Nov 26, 2005)

The effect of this area is devastating to Lahti a town of 100 000. The area shown here is the place where you buy the most important stuff - food, electronics, clothes coupled with fast-food restaurants. This picture is from 2001... the thing is that this area keeps growing.  The new shops are mostly car and DIY - home repair - refurbishing - interior decorators - gardening shops/malls... basically everything you couldn't buy from this place before are now offered. 

The city center is mostly occupied by office buildings and better quality clothing and interior decorator shops (and special shops like optic shops) which means that the average Joe on an average day doesn't go to the city center.

I blame the US


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## carlisle (Nov 10, 2005)

These are the best pictures of Smithdown road I could find.








Corner of Smithdown Road and Penny Lane (just off the bottom of the google earth picture)








Salisbury Street, one of the housing streets off Smithdown (on the google earth Image, Salisbury Street is towards the top end, on the right just past the Asda to be)








Looking up (down on the google earth) Smithdown Road from the 'Asda' during roadworks in 2001

Looking at Liverpool or any major british city on google earth will show masses of this terraced (parallel rows) of housing around the city centre. It dates back from Victorian times and is often called bye-law housing as it was built in this regularity to local bye-laws which demanded certain standards of space and hygeine in housing to replace slums. The fate of this victorian housing has been mixed since then, with some remaning as impoverished areas, some becoming gentrified, lots being knocked down and so on. People's feelings towards it are mixed, to many it is seen as attractive and full of character but to others it is asscoaited with poverty, slums and ugliness.

In the words of the chair of a company wanting to demolish housing along Edge Lane (the main road into Liverpool from the East) 'Nobody wants to see Coronation Street housing on Liverpool's doorstep' This is a bit narrow minded as they plan to replace it with modern housing and it sounds a bit like 1970s planning thinking that social problems could be solved by demolishing old houses and building new ones, that's how we got high-rise blocks of flats.

Of course, not everyone in British cities lives in high density terraced housing along roads like Smithdown. The photo below from google earth shows an area of low density housing a little further out from the end of Smithdown Road. It shows Calderstones park (bottom left) to the right of which is the area known as Calderstones (not really a neighbourhood in itself) and the neighbourhoods of Mossley Hill (top left) and Childwall (top right)


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## Cloudship (Jun 8, 2005)

> ... basically everything you couldn't buy from this place before are now offered.
> 
> 
> > Funny how no one seems to think about confronting the issue of what those retail stores are offering for selection and service when they deal with declining downtowns. Everyone around here lamented the fact that the local small grocery closed shop, but people forgot that half the time he was out of stuff, his meats were horrid, half the stock was out of date, he wasn't open when people could get to the market, it took forever to get help, and his prices were sky-high.


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