Photo by Michele Manske
CVS Pharmacy at 11th & Hennepin.
By Susan Braun
It's clear that as a society we have been asleep at the wheel about a lot of things for a long time. Today's topic: The environments we create and, specifically, the fake-window syndrome. This syndrome is closely related to the blank-wall syndrome but more insidious. Blank walls don't pretend to be anything other than barriers that separate spaces and keep people in or out. Fake windows deceive our perceptions and rob us of vital urban experiences.
This is a syndrome that has emerged in recent years as suburban chains have inserted themselves into urban environments. It is a condition that is familiar to people who walk in urban areas. It is familiar at the experiential level but not necessarily at the conscious level. It is my intention to make this problem conscious so that we can make better decisions about our built environments and our shared future.
To understand this issue, it is important to see how economic agendas manifest in physical form. Corporate chains have catered to the suburban market for a few decades now, utilizing an auto-oriented model. This model inadvertently creates and reinforces a sense of isolation and separation. This way of building proliferated for decades. However, even prior to the recent collapse of financial and investment systems, developers began questioning this pattern and started warming up to more pedestrian-oriented models. Our citizenry had begun craving reconnection — connection to place and to other people — and suburbanites began speaking with their feet, literally, and started moving to the inner city.
Now with the current state of the economy there is a grave sense of uncertainty and insecurity about how to proceed, with many sensing that business as usual is not necessarily the solution. We are on high alert. Embedded in this crisis are the solutions. We must look at what we have created and determine what does and does not work. In the case of our built environments, positive, vital pedestrian environments generally work. They are not only visually interesting, they offer an experience that is based on connection and place. We know what these places feel like — they are welcoming, interesting and often inspirational. It's really not too much to ask that our environments inspire us!
CVS, on the other hand, is taking the anti-pedestrian environment to an extreme. A review of three of their urban locations (11th & Hennepin, Franklin & Nicollet and Oxford & Grand in St. Paul) yields at least 10 different ways to block windows or in other ways destroy an interior-exterior connection and a sense of street vitality and safety. As you walk by these stores, here's the view: The backside of display shelves, blank walls built into the windows, blinds pulled all the way down, film over the windows, walls built into the windows with generic advertising on them, a view into a poorly organized storeroom, a view into the chaos of the backside of sinks and counters in the photo area, a wall with a shelf of gift bags stuffed with tissue paper (how symbolic — empty gift bags), a wall with a shelf of teddy bears with their backs to the street, and the crowning jewel is a display of once lovely prints, now an eerie green as the red ink fades, of the lost historic urban streetscape. I take this last one as the ultimate insult to the Grand Avenue community — a reminder of what has been deleted from their lives.
In these examples, the window has been exploited in its crudest and emptiest form — as an image, not as an experience. It is window as wall, not window as view. Windows are about views into and out of buildings. Windows are about natural light; windows can even still be about air. Windows should not be visual barriers that reinforce a feeling of separation. Covering and blocking windows robs us of a vital urban experience and diminishes the safety of the public realm.
People aren't moving into city neighborhoods to increase their sense of separation and isolation. People are searching for connection, vitality and local meaning. They are seeking interesting, pleasant and inspiring experiences. I think we can offer better than a blocked window that hides shelves of generic products offered at consistently high prices.
This is a new era — an era of re-emerging local economies, re-establishment of place and reconnection to people. I challenge CVS to rethink their urban-insertion model. It clearly doesn't work in the emerging markets. I challenge CVS to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Susan Braun is executive director of Elliot Park Neighborhood Inc. (EPNI). She has a master's of architecture and specializes in neighborhood-based urban design and development.
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