Main Street meets megastrip: Suburban downtown revitalization in Tempe, Arizona.

摘要

This study applies an interpretive approach to examine neotraditional commercial landscape forms and land use functions in revitalized older suburban downtowns. These hybrid landscapes blend elements of traditional Main Street with postmodern, large-scale megadevelopments to create a new urban form, the neotraditional suburban downtown. Data were gathered and interpreted for several recently redeveloped inner-ring suburban downtowns through research techniques that included field-based investigations, historic methods, comparative analysis, content analysis, and mapping. Research objectives were carried out through three vignette studies in California suburbs of Santa Monica, Pasadena, and Berkeley and a detailed empirical study of Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona. Three themes structure the research: urban/suburban dynamics, the role of ideology and imagery in place making, and landscape as cultural medium and messenger. The neotraditional suburban downtown is examined as representative of the most recent stage of evolving urban processes. The research evaluates morphological change that accompanies downtown redevelopment and considers representations of place as expressed by landscape qualities and promotional imagery. It also assesses the neotraditional suburban downtown within broader frameworks and contexts of analysis, and explores the meanings of this new urban form and its mix of uses.