FUCK YEAH URBAN DESIGN

8. RETAILERS APPROPRIATING THE LANGUAGE OF URBAN DESIGN

“We don’t call them stores anymore, we call them town squares,” Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, proclaimed during the tech company’s September keynote. The retail landscape is shifting and with shoppers moving online, retailers are experimenting with new models for physical spaces. Stores are still important touch points for brands as they introduce customers to their products, sensibility, and philosophy. The latest gimmick to get you inside? Framing them like community centers and public space.

Last year, Apple began appropriating the physical features of town squares by inserting trees and benches into its global flagship, in San Francisco, downplaying the products on display, and dedicating more space for people to gather. The same motif repeats in Apple’s newest marquee store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

Nike recently announced plans to develop a new flagship in New York City and emphasized building community through all of the new features in the space: a members-only club, a sneaker bar for advice, lockers for pick-ups and returns. Retail is essentially becoming the new “third space.” While Starbucks was the initial chain to capitalize on this notion almost a decade ago, there’s a big difference when the product is a $2 coffee and $200 sneakers or a $2,000 computer.

Co.Design‘s Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan summed up why stores can never really be town squares: “Without the budget or political support to create new public spaces in cities, it’s no surprise that corporations have stepped in,” she writes. “But the subtle shift in nomenclature matters. Stores will never be public spaces. They are regulated, surveilled, and designed by companies for specific purposes.”

2018

To say I have neglected this blog is an understatement. 2017 was a year of major changes for me. I had just completed my first full-time planning job and enjoyed a brief period of independent consulting thereafter. However, for stability’s sake, I could not remain in my beloved Richmond. I applied to a job with a private firm in Pittsburgh, interviewed, and accepted. I would describe this as a dream job as I am free from focus, meaning I work on preservation plans, transportation plans (especially bike ped), land use plans, and urban design projects.

If I can get used to the single digit temperatures of this beautiful city, I think I’ll have some interesting things to share with all of you in the future. I am tentatively taking the AICP in May, so you might even see this blog as an outlet for my thoughts as I study for the beast. 

“What else is there to do but to do the work?”

“One thing I believe is important is that we promote sustainable homeownership versus homeownership for homeownership's sake”

Charles Montgomery, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design