[ericseppanen]

Look at Stanford Shopping Center in the satellite view sometime: a bunch of rectangles surrounded by an ocean of surface parking.

It's much more like a conventional mall than a downtown: It's effectively walled off from the rest of the neighbordood. You're expected to go there by driving your car, and it's isolated by its massive parking lots so nobody would consider walking in or out a pleasant experience.

[tikhonj]

This is why I end up on University St all the time and almost never go to Stanford Shopping Center even though it's a bit closer, pleasant and I like a few of the restaurants/cafes.

What I would really like is for a few blocks of University to become pedestrian-only with lots of outdoor seating for its cafes and restaurants. (The same goes for other downtown areas in the South Bay, like Santa Cruz in Menlo Park.) It's amazing how little outdoor seating we have in the Bay Area despite the amazing weather.

[hkmurakami]

Something like Forest or Hamilton Ave becoming pedestrian only would be great.

That being said, University Ave becoming increasingly "corporate blasé" in its selection of restaurants (basically great for a business meeting and little else) is sad to see.

[hkmurakami]

That's true -- but it's a requirement of SV suburbia tbh. Density isn't high enough anywhere to support retail activity without a huge investment in parking, even in downtown MV or PA.

The personal vehicle oriented commutes exacerbate this.

[rconti]

Yes, but downtown Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Carlos, hell, even Redwood City are the polar opposite of the Stanford Mall. The fact that a bunch of vendors of overpriced trinkets happens to have outdoor passageways is more a factor of the good weather of the bay area than it is an indicator of some kind of difference from your generic indoor megamall.

There's a difference between needing parking, and surrounding an area with a moat of parked cars.

I think one big problem retail is facing is that, for a long time, efficiency won the day. The chains and their supply chains and economies of scale drove more and more mom and pops out of business, and then only the really efficient chains could survive, and then they had to refinance and take on all this debt that the article mentions, and pretty soon there's absolutely nothing to mourn, and no reason not to buy from Amazon rather than drive to a Best Buy. Some truly unique independent mom and pop or local shops could be worth spending a few bucks more than Amazon to patronize. GenericMall stores give me 0 reason to patronize them over Amazon.