Across the course of human history and the breadth of human culture, the Center of Commerce and the Center of Culture have traditionally been one place — a shared place, the Center of Community.
The Greek agora of ancient Western culture, the Arab souk of the east — these were the places one went for the daily events of life: for commerce, for governance, for arts, for worship, for social contact. There one found merchants, priests, craftsmen, administrators, artists, and entertainers; there one's home was found. The agora and the souk gave way to new names, but always for the same idea: commerce and culture occupying one place — One Place across human history.
Not so in contemporary Western culture. The events and advancements of the twentieth century redefined culture in remarkable ways — and in some lamentable ones. Among the lamentable is our recent history of separating commerce from culture; in so doing, we have weakened our communities. We live in one place, shop in a second, work in a third, worship in another, and seek entertainment in others. The places of our lives have become segregated, specialized, and sanitized — and we spend our days endlessly shuttling from one to the next.
So where, then, do we meet each other? In what place can our lives be accidentally enriched?
The shopping center industry, in which Foothill finds its roots, was a leading player in this sea change. We listened to our merchants and their need for parking, and we pulled them out of the center of our communities, off to the edges, far removed from the center of culture. We turned our role as the agoranomos — the overseer of the agora — into that of the mall manager, and our culture is the poorer for it.
Wall Street is with us in its drive for predictability and specialization: there are shopping center funds, office funds, industrial funds, apartment funds, single-family funds, even self-storage funds. There are few with the fundamentals to understand the mixing of uses in a community, or the ability to invest in that direction.
The planning community and regulatory bodies are equally complicit. Only recently have zoning codes intentionally encouraged mixing it up. Land use gets fiscalized, the agora gets left behind, and we end up with sterile neighborhoods devoid of central districts and civic engagement. And what passes for mixed-use — residential units stacked over a thin band of ground-floor "retail" — is no replacement for what has been lost.
Even our preservation communities are complicit. We don't live or work in our old buildings; instead we cordon them off behind velvet ropes, charge an admission fee to see them, and turn them into something less than they were — than what they could be.
And our culture is the poorer for it. The places where we run into those whom we might never otherwise meet are fewer and fewer. Restaurants — we don't like eating alone — occupy ever-narrower niches as the segments of our culture are further stratified. Vibrant churches, temples, and synagogues are no longer at home in the center of our communities. We are increasingly polarized, and our communities are symbols of that polarization.
Is there no place in our culture for the specialized mass merchants who deliver staggering breadth at remarkable prices? Of course there is. Is there no value in zoning that establishes quiet neighborhoods and efficient workplaces? Of course there is. But we will do well to intentionally allow for, encourage, and create those places that are a bit less planned — where the milieu of life is encouraged to grow and to thrive.
