Enhancing suburban life with Victor Gruen: lessons from two Tuscan malls

Abstract

The essay investigates the role of shopping centers as suburban collective spaces through the analysis of two case studies located in the Florence-Prato-Pistoia plain, in northern Tuscany. The underlying thesis is that cultural, technical, and political elites have failed to grasp the social relevance of these commercial containers and treated them as merely technical artifacts, to be only regulated in terms of supply of retail floor-space, effects on mobility, and needs of parking facilities. To support the thesis of their social significance, the research uses an ethnographic approach based on structured observations and open-ended interviews with different types of users. The social significance that emerges from their users' spatial practices is contrasted with political and journalistic descriptions, in which shopping malls are often labeled as non-places (Giovannoni 2019). In Lefebvrian terms, this corresponds to contrasting lived space with imagined space (Lefebvre 1991). Such negative characterizations preclude, on the discursive/argumentative level, the possibility of elevating and qualifying malls through regulations and design. In the second part of the essay, the policy implications of the analysis are discussed, drafting out some tentative regulatory actions. In particular, the lesson of Victor Gruen is rediscovered, considered by many to be the inventor of the American shopping mall (Gruen and Smith, 1960). We show that by translating Gruen’s planning and design criteria into actual planning and design regulations, the social collective function of shopping malls could be properly fulfilled and maximized addressing a largely unsatisfied need for high-quality collective spaces for the suburbs. Although the discussion is based on two Tuscan cases, its implications can be extended to most suburbs in Western countries and beyond.