Threshold Resistance by A. Alfred Taubman Read Free Book Online Page B

serial vision in planning productive, stimulating space. It’s not that I didn’t think about these things before reading Cullen’s book. In fact, I’m cursed or blessed with what some have called “third-dimensional” or “parallax” vision. With essentially every object or vista I see, I think about how it could be better. Not just different. Better. But Cullen captured these hard-to-describe concepts in understandable, almost poetic language. Here is his paragraph on optics from the introduction to Townscape:
    Let us suppose that we are walking through a town: here is a straight road off which is a courtyard, at the far side of which another street leads out and bends slightly before reaching a monument. Not very unusual. We take the path and our first view is that of the street. Upon turning into the courtyard the new view is revealed instantaneously at the point of turning, and this view remains with us whilst we walk across the courtyard. Leaving the courtyard we enter the further street. Again a new view is suddenly revealed although we are traveling at a uniform speed. Finally as the road bends the monument swings into view. The significance of all this is that although the pedestrian walks through the town at a uniform speed, the scenery of towns is often revealed in a series of jerks and revelations. This we call SERIAL VISION.
    Cullen explains that “a long straight road has little impact because the initial view is soon digested and becomes monotonous.” Heunderscores the importance of what he calls “the existing view and the emerging view.” And then he suggests that the experience we enjoy whenever visiting an attractive town is more than “an accidental chain of events,” and argues that planners can use this understanding to create better, more stimulating environments:
    Suppose, however, that we take over this linking as a branch of the art of relationship; then we are finding a tool with which human imagination can begin to mould the city into a coherent drama. The process of manipulation has begun to turn the blind facts into a taut emotional situation.
    We wanted our customer to have much the same experience Cullen describes so beautifully in Townscape (which is still available in a paperback version published by Architectural Press under the title The Concise Townscape ). Again, the objective was to give every retailer a good chance of attracting the shopper into the store, to make every location a 100 percent location.
    The message didn’t always sink in. Years ago, I was reading a newspaper article in which one of our mall managers was asked to point out the “best location” in his center. I suppose that’s a fair question for an innocent, uninitiated reporter to ask. The answer, however, was unforgivable. Our manager pointed out a location on the mall’s second level near a particular department store. Now, for a particular tenant, perhaps there is a best location in one of our centers, and we work hard to determine that spot based on a whole host of variables. But to suggest that such a thing exists for a generic tenant is just short of sacrilegious! Creating 100 percent locations for all tenants is what we’re all about. Counting to ten, I asked our head of operations to have a chat with the mall manager in question. I don’t think he made that mistake again—at least not at one of our properties.
    The key to creating 100 percent locations is moving customers effectively through our space. With inexpensive suburban land costs, it would have been cheaper (in construction expense) to spread out all the tenants on one level between potent department store anchors. But we took da Vinci’s warnings to heart, and stacked the stores on two levels, creating mall corridors between the anchor department stores of around 1,000 feet, a comfortable stroll of three city blocks. We punched holes in the upper flo or,