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From: "Architexturez." <interface.services@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:50:50 +0530
INSTANT URBANISM
Citified suburbs becoming new model for the Bay Area
John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer
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Buildings as high as five stories hug the sidewalk, most cloaked in
dignified stone but some in crisp modern glass. A movie marquee jabs up
like a needle across from a plaza that has a skating rink in winter and
a busy pub year-round.
Upstairs are offices, or apartments, or condominiums. And while the
shops are the usual suspects -- Baby Gap at one end, Victoria's Secret
at another -- art studios are tucked around the corner.
It doesn't feel urban, not really -- but it's nothing like the shopping
mall that covered this spot until 2002, or the tract-house neighborhoods
that surround it.
What's emerging instead is a new form of the American Dream -- a new
type of landscape where the lines between city and suburb blur in ever
more complex ways.
cont'd....
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/08/MNG70P4C0B1.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/09/MNGPBP56AD1.DTL&hw=John+King&sn=001&sc=1000