Parks, Malls, and <i>The Art of War</i>

In the post-war years, Americans migrated en masse into suburbs punctuated\udby shopping centers that served as social and recreational hubs.\udConcerned about the civic wellbeing of shopping-centered suburbanites,\uda group called the Agora Coalition formed in the 1990s to enhance malls???\udcivic functioning through a combination of design and programming strategies.\udThis paper presents an adversarial alternative to such an approach.\udRather than working ???with??? the mall as its prodding civic conscience, the\udpaper recommends strategizing ???against??? it on behalf of civic life. The\udpaper reveals four vulnerabilities in malls that such thinking can exploit:\udmall users may not find malls ego-enhancing places in which to socialize;\udthe current economic recession has pointed up that many mall goods\udare frivolous nonessentials; malls are less likely to engender topophilia\udthan are local public landscapes; and, as successful retail institutions in a\udcompetitive capitalist environment, malls employ successful strategies for\udgaining customers that designers of civic spaces can emulate. Indeed, the\udadversarial, zero-sum approach recommended here exemplifies the use\udof market-honed, ???mall??? strategizing. To nurture such thinking, I refer to\udSun-Tzu???s classic treatise The Art of War. The 2,400-year old text is required\udreading in MBA programs nationwide and presumably informs the thinking\udof many who build and manage malls. What would these people do\udif they were now competing against their creations on behalf of civic life