Big box debate: are new urbanists elitist?

Big box debate: are new urbanists elitist? Retail consultant Robert Gibbs accuses new urbanists of opposing stores used by ordinary shoppers. Others say it’s not so simple. New urbanists need to rethink their attitude toward chain stores and big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart, retail consultant and planner Robert Gibbs charged during a sometimes feisty CNU Council in late February in San Diego. Gibbs, the most prominent retail adviser serving developers of new urban communities, argued that new urbanists have become elitist and unrealistic about what kinds of stores to invite into their town centers. “I think that for a long time we have been going down the wrong road,” the Birmingham, Michigan-based consultant declared. As an example he cited an effort to exclude a “middle-market” grocery store from the new urban community of Middleton Hills, Wisconsin, and to seek a tonier retailer instead — one that would stock “organics, things that are hand-picked, mineral water, etc.” In Gibbs’s view, new urbanists have been skewing retail development toward stores that cater to upper-middle-class tastes or budgets, such as Whole Foods, and away from large retailers who deliver goods to millions of Americans cheaply. “I believe this bias is unworthy of the CNU and needs to be brought into the open and addressed,” he said. Wal-Mart, he noted, now gets one of every 10 retail dollars in America. “It’s the largest seller of diamonds, DVDs, toys, underwear, and women’s wear,” he said, and it ought to be welcomed if its stores are designed to be part of a walkable community. ethical concerns None of the 85 people attending the CNU Council quarreled with Gibbs’s contention that Americans no longer shop the way they did when Market Square in Lake Forest, Illinois (a town admired by new urbanists), was designed in 1916. Nor did anyone dispute his argument that retailing has ceased to revolve around independent, local merchants in little shops. However, some of the participants — who came from throughout the US and from Australia — objected to his idea that new urbanists should not care whether the retailer is a big-box operator or whether its business practices are repellent. Wal-Mart has been accused of abuses such as forcing employees to work overtime for free and of locking employees in the store during the overnight shifts. Much of Wal-Mart’s early growth came from establishing large stores that killed small-town business districts. “Ethical values should be part of the discussion,” said Peter Swift of Longmont, Colorado. Gibbs replied that new urbanists are not “the business-practice police of the world,” and said they should stick to design issues. The objective is “a walkable collection of shops offering goods and services that meet the needs and desires of the community,” Gibbs said. “I don’t think we have to concern ourselves with ownership, profit, size.” Gibbs said big-box retailers are now eager to capture the underserved urban population. In some instances, they will construct attractive buildings with more than one floor, more than one set of doors, and structured parking — elements enabling them to fit into a network of walkable streets. JC Penney has announced it will operate stores with “multiple doors and possibly multiple floors,” Gibbs said. Kohl’s has become more cooperative on design questions, he said. “It would have been unheard of five years ago to have a two-level Kohl’s with multiple doors.” Can Wal-Mart change? CNU President John Norquist said Wal-Mart is “feeling the heat on a number of issues” and is “trying to figure out how to fit their stores into an urban context.” In a similar vein, Gibbs said, “The market is coming our way. Let’s see what we can do to round ourselves out.” Gibbs criticized communities that restrict the maximum size of stores — allowing supermarkets no larger than 20,000 square feet, for example. Swift countered that new urbanists have found that certain dimensions work well for creating walkable communities. Lee Sobel, co-author of Greyfields Into Goldfields, concurred, saying, “Size matters. We have to take size or scale into consideration.” Berkeley architect-planner Peter Calthorpe said big-box stores can be made presentable by having liner buildings along part of their perimeter, as at Stapleton in Denver. “You can have the big boxes backing onto a freeway, with parking between them and the main street,” as in Westminster, Colorado, Calthorpe said. Fronting the main street would be smaller stores. Chris Leinberger of Arcadia Land Company intends to place a big-box store at the edge of a 19-acre site adjacent to downtown Albuquerque. In-line stores will come up to the sidewalk, and there will be two entrances, he said — one facing the sidewalk and the other facing a large parking lot. Miami architect Andres Duany argued that in successful retail centers, many one-story buildings will eventually give way to more intense urban development, as is already happening at Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland. “The potential to plan these places so parking lots can evolve into [urban settings] is not a fairy tale,” Charles Bohl, author of the ULI book Place Making, agreed. “The structure of streets and blocks is what we should provide.” Consultant Peter Katz chided Gibbs for “beating up new urbanists” about the “higher demographic level” that many new urban retail developments are designed for. “We’re employed by clients,” he noted, “who want to build where they want to build.” u