FUTURE VISION: ABANDONED MALLS AS SOLARPUNK HOUSING / NAVARRE BARTZ
Everyone knows the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Recycling tends to get a lot of press, and rightly so, as it’s a step in the right direction as far as a circular economy is concerned, but one underrated idea in the solarpunk community right now is architectural reuse. One idea worth considering is to repurpose abandoned malls as housing co-ops. While building high-density, plant-encrusted skyscrapers like those in Singapore is fantastic, it’s not a great allocation of resources in many places around the world. Large numbers of people do live in megacities that could benefit from these architectural wonders, but smaller towns and cities are full of interesting pieces of real estate that has been abandoned due to the vagaries of capitalism. Hayley Peterson, in “Dying Shopping Malls are Wreaking Havoc on Suburban America,” outlined the 25% of US shopping malls at risk of closing due to the increasing loss of large retail department stores. Dozens of malls have already closed their doors for good. As a co-housing or commune environment, malls offer an interesting opportunity. With hundreds of thousands of square feet available including kitchens and bathrooms, a small community could sprout up in a mall with little infrastructural investment. Rezoned as a mixed-use property, these mini-arcologies could have small stores on-site for groceries and hand-crafted items. The food court could become a communal kitchen and house restaurants run by the people living in the mall co-op. Residents could take food back to their quarters or meet up with their neighbors for a friendly meal.
The parking lots could be reclaimed as greenspace, leaving a small area for car-sharing vehicles and a transit stop. A community garden could spring up where there was once only asphalt. Depending on the local bike infrastructure, spur trails could be built from the mall to other interesting parts of town. Most malls have some natural lighting, so placing stained glass in some of the skylights would add to the solarpunk vibe. Given their size, malls have plenty of roof area to generate power for residents by adding solar panels and small wind turbines. With enough efficiency upgrades in the building, the mall co-op could sell excess power to the grid to make money for residents as a small-scale power plant. Some of the key upgrades to target would be a geothermal heat pump for HVAC and switching all the artificial lighting to LEDs. As a small step in this direction, a housing coop might buy and rezone one abandoned store in a mall for a pilot residence program. Existing mall businesses would benefit from the increased traffic of people living in the same structure, and this would be a much lower cost solution than buying an entire mall outright. Slowly, co-op-affiliated businesses and residences would grow up through the cracks left as the corporate giants leave the mall. Once critical mass is reached, the co-op could buy the building from the previous owners and complete the solarpunk transformation to a solar or wind powered mini-arcology. The death of the American mall may be one of the most promising opportunities we have toward the birth of bastions of solarpunk society.
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