I just read an article in a business magazine discussing a recent trend in retail development called lifestyle centers. These are the "anti-mall" collections of stores, restaurants, and community-oriented spaces. They may be oriented toward luxury retailers, or geared toward unique, boutique-style shops. The goal, though, is to make sure they suit the "demographic" around them, or the people they hope to attract.
This does sound like a step in the right direction, because it should be able to build the community feeling. In some cases, this is true, and to that degree, they've done a little bit of good.
On the other hand, I think they're just a new style of mall. The developers are still segregating uses from each other. There's no residential, and often no office space to enable the space to truly be a lifestyle space. It's actually just a technique to squeeze more profit from retail real estate development.
The other issue with these centers is that the developer is doing more to homogenize the space and the people who frequent the center. There's over 6.5 billion people in the world, and the last thing we need is for all of them to become clones.
The best developments I've seen have been urban developments that have been put together over time by different people. They attract a broad mix of residents and visitors, and don't force them all to have the same behaviors.
We need to let people be individuals, and respect that individualism, not shape their lifestyle with "lifestyle centers".
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