The creative challenge: Repurposing shopping malls

Yeah, it's cool that the Rustbelt Market moved into an abandoned Old Navy but how about a creative movement to revitalize shopping malls and strips? From golf to community farms to dog parks, cities around the country are getting creative with empty big box spaces. Excerpt: "Even at many malls that continue to thrive, developers are redesigning them as town squares — adding elements like dog parks and putting greens, creating street grids that go through the malls, and restoring natural elements like creeks that were originally paved over. “Basically they’re building the downtowns that the suburbs never had,” along with reworking abandoned urban malls for nonshopping uses, said Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor at the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology." Read the rest here.