Strip Mall vs Boulevard

Geoff Dyer, writing for Placeshakers, has a great piece examining the subtle but important difference between a strip mall lined arterial and a multi-way boulevard:

This realization occurred to me a while back as I wound myself mindlessly through a dysfunctional arterial corridor lined with strip malls, pondering how I might transform it into a multi-way boulevard paradise. Given the basic ingredients of these two roadways, their differences are really quite subtle on the surface, but their outcome is strikingly different. So what’s up? The reality is, if you take all the basic ingredients of the roadway itself, there are many similarities between the two. You’ve got fast moving lanes in the center. You have a landscaped area at the edge, maybe with or without a sidewalk but definitely with curbs, you’ve got a slower traffic lane near the buildings, and then you have parking. So what is the leap between a strip mall on an arterial and a commercial building on the boulevard?

[…]

While both the arterial and the multi-way boulevard handle lots of traffic, give stores parking in front, and serve as regional commercial corridors, the subtle difference of a connected high-quality pedestrian realm versus the disconnected individual access of a strip mall actually ends up producing a very striking contrast.

This is a really great analysis by Geoff - I hadn’t thought about how similar the two corridor types were until this post. It really goes to show that great design (and appropriate typology) can make the sum so much more than the parts.