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Originally Posted by comadriver
Ryan, any chance this could be a correlation rather than causal relationship?
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In the interest of clarity, a causal relationship
is a type of correlation; but you're correct that not all correlations are causal. Further, even where causality does exist, its direction is not always clear.
For example, there is a very strong positive correlation between ice cream sales and heatstroke, but it would be absurd to conclude that ice cream causes heatstroke or that heatstroke causes increased desire for ice cream. The correct explanation for this correlation is that both heatstroke and increased desire for ice cream are caused by hot weather.
This example indicates the best way to determine whether and how two correlated phenomena are connected causally: the presence or absence of a plausible causal path that makes useful predictions that can be tested empirically.
This gets tricky, of course, when studying the economic and social effects of a given building form. It's not like you can test these effects experimentally with an otherwise-similar control group!
But through the less direct process of careful observation, comparative analysis of different areas and different cities over time, it's still possible to draw pretty confident conclusions.
Looking at a number of downtown malls built in different North American cities during the 1960s-1980s, certain patterns emerge:
- The existing streets around inward-facing, indoor malls tend to deteriorate significantly after the malls were created.
- The existing streets around outward-facing malls with porous streetwalls and around outdoor malls with pedestrian areas tend not to deteriorate as much.
- The existing streets around malls that were converted from inward-facing to outward-facing (i.e. from blank to porous) tend to improve after the conversion.
As an example, an excellent academic study of this trend is Piere Filion et al.'s paper
The Successful Few: Healthy Downtowns of Small Metropolitan Regions, which examines the relative success or failure of various downtowns and
concludes that:
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downtown could no longer compete with the suburbs on its own terms and that their salvation rested instead on their distinction from the suburban realm in terms of the nature of their activities, a more compact built environment, and the predominance of pedestrian movement for intra-downtown journeys.
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In other words: successful downtowns have streetwalls, dense, mixed building uses, and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure - none of which characteristics the new Centre Mall offers.
I also encourage you to supplement your research with basic firsthand observation. Starting at the corner of King and James, walk along King to Bay and turn right (north). Walk on Bay until York and turn right (east). Walk along York until James and turn right (south). Pay attention as you walk: to the sidewalk, the flow of traffic, the building walls that surround you, the presence or absence of other pedestrians, and so on.
Probably the worst offender in the megablock is City Centre, whose exterior is the most blank and impermeable, and whose facade is the most bland and cartoony (right down to fake flags on the clock tower). Ask yourself:
What reason or incentive might I have to stand or walk outside this mall?
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