Common Food Court (2006)

About this photo

Location: 110 Front St, Worcester, MA

The food court of the Worcester Common Outlets mall. This mall was a tragically ugly and bad attempt at urban revitalization in the 1970s, taking the place of several blocks of downtown Worcester. Take a look at the gigantic parking lot in the airphoto: it's as big as the actual mall. I went in there maybe half a dozen times during my years in Worcester, and every time there were more and more empty storefronts, until the whole thing finally shut down completely. At the time of this photo the only business open on the second floor was a Subway in the back right corner of this shot. I have no idea why it was still open. The one lonely person behind the counter seemed to be keeping busy wiping the counter and moving little bags of food from one place to another. I doubt that she had made a sandwich all day.

This one-time urban revitalization project is now being torn down to be replaced by an urban revitalization project, a new, improved one that makes use of buzzwords like "mixed-use" and "smart growth." The developer is calling it CitySquare. They're planning to build commercial space alongside 900 units of housing. Check out the sketches and writeup in this Boston Globe article - looks a little like Vancouver's Yaletown. Good idea perhaps, except that I seriously doubt you can just give birth to a fully-formed pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use urban village, plop it down in the context of something like Worcester's downtown, and expect it to transform Worcester into Portland, Oregon. There's no housing downtown right now, and 900 units isn't enough to prop up that amount of retail on its own. Technically, the city has public transit, but believe me that you would only use if it you had no other option. So how are people going to make use of this pedestrian-friendly uptopia? By getting into their cars from the outlying suburbs and driving there on the six-lane I-290 (there's lots of freeway exits nearby). They'll park somewhere conveniently nearby, get out of the cars, and enjoy the novelty of walking around downtown for pleasure. Then they'll get back in the cars and drive home. That's a themed amusement park, not a plan for urban change.

n.b.: Canon F-1; APX-100 in HC-110