What Makes POWER CENTERS Bad for Cities: Investigating Heinous Land Uses, Episode 1
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this first episode of a series that will look at terrible land uses and explore everything that makes them bad for cities, your intrepid host visits a Power Center. We'll look at the current state of affairs for the Big Box retail format, inventory the smaller retail and dining options that tend to cluster around these behemoths, and understand the way Power Centers are designed.
Today's video looks at the history of the Big Box as well as the Power Center, reviews typical methodologies used to estimate the parking needs of a "discount superstore" (hint: they are enormous), the trip generation (and discussion of how it affects adjacent transportation facilities), and how Power Centers leverage ubiquitous auto ownership.
We'll also take brief side trips to a typical suburban mall (the Galleria at Sunset) to do a wellness check, and to the Sunset Station Hotel/Casino to review a completely different form of intense trip generation. Finally we'll talk about how cities use economic development tools, including tax incentives, to lure Power Center retailers to town, and why it's counterproductive. Hope you enjoy!
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- Cost of Car Ownership: • The All-In Cost of Car...
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Resources:
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_c...)
- goodjobsfirst.org/harms-big-b...
- www.cityofhenderson.com/home/...
- credc.org/
- www.mcall.com/news/mc-xpm-200...
- www.actionnews5.com/story/279...
- callnewspapers.com/bass-pro-s...
- www.pressherald.com/2019/11/0...
- itetripgen.org/
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![บุกร้านไอศกรีม VJ วุ้นเส้น !!!! [ดูคลิปเต็มหน้าช่อง] #Short | PANG ORNHIRA](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/g549nEhKZdc/mqdefault.jpg)
My theory on mattresses are that they are holding real estate. They cost next to nothing to build, they require no stock (centralized distribution centers), and little staff. Mattresses have a crazy high margin so selling only one or two a day can break even and avoid empty storefronts while holding the real estate.
I thought the leading theory was just money laundering
@@austinjones8976 I’m pretty sure the money laundering thing is just a meme
This. And also those specialist matress stores could very well be selling to commercial customers via the back office, too. A few "volume" contracts for smaller hotels, motels, B&Bs, etc., would make a pretty big difference, and there's a good chance mattresses used in commercial operations need replacing more often due to damage, etc. And it turns out a show room is useful for selling to commercial buyers, too.
Also, at least mattress stores around here also sell other items that have a higher replacement churn rate like pillows and such, too.
Of course, the stores that sell mattresses as a sideline or part of an "everything" strategy can get away with an even lower volume.
@@djyankees002 Without knowing whether it started as a meme or not... I genuinely believe that a big fraction of mattress stores are laundering money. There are just too many, and tons of people order them online anyway.
@@StarManta I don't think that mattress stores have a lot of cash income, I'm not sure how you launder money without cash income. Especially not how you do it and not get caught right away.
Ray, I just want to take a second to appreciate how this has more and more become a deadpan urbanist comedy channel with the chillest of biting sarcasm. Thanks for all the laughs.
Seconding this. I was trying to come up with the right words and here you've said them
If you didn't laugh you'd have to cry
Absolutely. The best chuckles every week. Love it
I too wanted to comment about your sense of comedic timing! I love it
100% this, i'm not a city planner / urbanist nerd or in the profession . ( though i am a human in a city, Vancouver Canada) Ray, you operate with a level of deadpan snark that us mere mortals can only dream of attaining in our wildest fantasies . Bravo
I can't put it into words, but seeing parking space closed off in order to have a queue of cars waiting for the drive-through really is a big red flag.
As a Civil Engineer, I can tell you; aside from being designed to meet city codes, sites are truly just designed to look pretty on CAD and plan sets.
Like those CGI smiling happy people walking along the unusable sidewalk alongside the restaurant pad site, headed toward a half-mile stroll across uncontrolled lot-traffic lanes and hot parking-striped asphalt that goes mostly unused to reach anything else.
The computer killed architecture.
No. They’re not.
wow. and even failed at that.
@UnderBridge Rock More like after the 1920s
Speaking as an engineer, a "Big Box" store has unreinforced concrete block or "Breeze Block" walls on a concrete slab floor with a pre-fabricated steel roof. They are extremely cheap to build, and are also catnip for tornadoes and even ordinary windstorms. Typically, the doors are the strongest part of the building, and the only place left standing after the walls are turned to rubble and dust. Do not go into a Big Box for a storm shelter unless your only alternatives are a motor vehicle or mobile home.
The idea of those places so easily falling apart and being wiped off the face of the earth is satisfying tho
I think 'breeze block' is something they use in India to allow air flow
Ah, so speaking as an engineer you are saying urban growth should go for more quality over quantity? Makes sense. Too bad most North American cities don't follow that logic. (I think it has something to do with out-dated zoning laws)
@@coolioso808 - No, I am trying to define what @CityNerd doesn't define, which is "Big Block" store. Also -- and as a transportation engineer, I only know enough about structural engineering to make general statements -- a big building with a light roof supported by minimum-sized tall columns -- to maximize floor area and minimize cost -- will collapse under a heavy stress event. The unreinforced masonry wall are too brittle to take much punishment, which is why they turn to powder and rubble.
My structural engineering professor described a Big Block as a building "built for negative $5 a square foot" and that's not much of an exaggeration. It's also why proper underground storm shelters SHOULD be mandatory when these buildings are built.
In the States, a "breeze block" (U.K. term) is called a "Cinderblock." A cinderblock is almost what it says on the tin: A brick made of cinders (ash) and cement. They are so brittle, they will break if you drop it from a height. That's what your typical "Big Block" store is built of.
This is actually the best representation of (North) American culture that I can think of, full stop. If someone has never been to the US or Canada and is really, truly looking to understand what's at the core of daily existence, these power centers are the most succinct encapsulation of what life is like here for the majority of people.
Yep, it's ridiculous. Even in the small city that I live in, the big box power centre prevails! It's ruined downtown, almost ruined the previously big centre which was the indoor shopping mall. This power centre is also built in a flood plain by the river. Smart, right? Oh yes, they have to install big, giant sandbags along the main road leading to the power centre to stop the water from rushing in to take out that giant monstrosity. Fun.
Well that and Levittown across from a Stroad.
@New Moon Never said it was part of my daily life, just that it's representative of a lot of people's! I've tried to get as far away from this lifestyle as I can, living car free in a major urban center.
@@MrTNHale For some, living in a major urban center is life in hell. For another demographic, living in a major urban center may be heaven on earth.
Thankfully I live in a place in the US where I can largely avoid these retail wastelands and the downtown main street retail area is still thriving.
I will say, power centres have one pro going for them. They're massive plots of land with a single owner that are ripe for conversion into mixed use neighborhoods, probably without much nimby opposition.
My thoughts exactly
Something similar is actually happening at one local mall. It's currently being planned to be converted to a mix of shops, apartments and service businesses like doctors. Considering the mall has been falling apart for years (literally. There's a hole in the ceiling people just walked around underneath) I think it's a good idea.
One of the rare cases where horse-blinder on, line-go-up design is actually somewhat beneficial in the long term. The commercial architecture even disassembles itself at just the right rate!
I totally agree! We unfortunately live in an area that is actively building power centres. I have regular outbursts about how many people could live in the damn parkinglot everytime we bike to the store! We need mixed use. It breaks my heart to see our area sprawl further into good farmland while our small city centers rot or get taken over by big corp and million dollar condos. We need dense urbanization!
Yeah, the only prohibiting factor is making the redevelopent work financially. I do wish there was some incentives to make redeveloping these agly power centers atractive. There is a failing mall near me that could easyly be turned into a mixed use space with grocery store, restorants, apartments, tonhomes, open urban space, and small stores for typical needs like hair cuts etc. Whats crazy is they are still billding stupid strip malls right accross the street from this failing mall.
Not sure if someone has mentioned this already, but there is a whole conspiracy theory around mattress stores. It states that there is a a non-zero chance that mattress stores are money laundering operations. The fact that there are so many, they are so close together, they never have customers, ect, all lead to the conclusion that there has to be something else going on.
I love it.
Reddit loved/loves it There are so many folks who say it is the one conspiracy they believe. And I kinda can't blame them...
Speaking of money laundering: the stores where young ladies & men stand in the doorway & hand out samples of miracle "eye cream," etc. are almost certainly laudering money. They're located in premium centers with sky-high rent, and they're always virtually empty. Employees & owners are Israeli or Russian. Definitely something shady going on, and if you talk to the hawkers in front of the store, they become very hostile very quickly.
It's a fun conspiracy but really it's a low cost business to enter with cheap rent and huge margins, I bet if you make a sale once a day you're rolling
Interesting, it is relatively rare to see a mattress only store in northern Europe. Think massage parlours are the mofia hubs.
It's just overprized as fuck
Probably 1-5% of businesses in almost every category are probably involved in money laundering in some way. It pays to diversify.
Never knew there was a term besides "strip mall." I guess there are strip malls meeting certain size and parking lot minimums. As far as walking, my favorite is when you have to leave one parking lot, drive down the block one traffic light, then turn into another parking lot, because there is no pedestrian connection between the two strip malls or "power centers."
God forbid you could walk between 2 mattress stores of the same franchise.
I was attempting to make a joke here, but I bet they ACTUALLY don't want you to do that, in case they happen to have different prices.
And you're not allowed to do that anyway. The parking lot is for customers only, so if you're going to the parking lot next door you need to move the car over there as well.
Which could mean driving around the block if you're moving in the wrong direction.
I never really heard of them called power centres before either, but I guess power centres are better descriptions as they try to overwhelm the area with a bunch of big box stores all within massive parking lot space. Whereas a "strip mall" almost sounds enticing. You are going to the strip mall you say? Oh, maybe I'll join you for some fun... ah, not that kind of fun.
Where I live they're often called "smart centres". Odd since it's not a smart use of land space.
I don't generally think of strip malls containing big box stores, and being made up of smaller storefronts.
I can tell your deadpan delivery is natural. I find it endlessly entertaining. And somehow it fits the material perfectly.
It’s so deadpan it made me double-take at first as a new viewer
@@nena_nezali this
There is something deeply ingrained in the Canadian psyche to enjoy any mention of our hometown, even if it's for our worst feature. So thanks for the Edmonton shout-out.
Yep. Dunking on South Edmonton Common, the city being the murder capital of Canada one time, our absolutely silly number of liquor and pot stores...
@@ScooterinABMurder capital of Canada?! Whats going on in Edmonton? Its not like you have urban blight like Philadelphia or Detroit.🤔
@@geoffoaklandOur downtown is just a shithole. Granted, "murder capital" is a relative term. I think it was a few dozen murders for the year.
I'm in Edmonton as well and I can confirm that the parking lots of some of these power centres quite literally stretch as far as the eye can see. When they clear the snow from them in the winter and pile it up they make hills big enough for kids to go sledding on.
or pile the snow up on the sidewalks
As a Brit I can appreciate good sacarsm, and this guy's sarcasm is on another level
That bay area comment was hilarious
Everything I know I learned from John Cleese
@@CityNerd he’s an icon
John Cleese I’m talking about
@@CityNerd Sometimes known as... Tim?
Palm "trees" are the only way I know they're not filming in my local suburbs.
By the way, the plowed snow mountains generated by these parking lots should have ski lifts installed.
Vail entered the chat. They’ll charge a few hundred a day for that skiing. #epicfail
Ski lifts, a hip local smb bar at the bottom, hell yeah I agree.
What I found glaringly missing from both US shopping malls and US 'power centres' on my travels through the USA, as an Australian where there are also large suburban shopping malls everywhere, was the lack of bus infrastructure. Yeah, Australian shopping malls have tons of car parking too (albeit usually multi-level, taking up less space), but shopping malls are also generally home to MASSIVE bus interchanges - on site (not on the external roads) and usually right next to the entrances - and almost every suburban bus route terminates at a shopping mall at each end, usually via a couple of train stations in between. I don't even think I remember seeing a single bus stop onsite at any US shopping mall.
Having known people that worked at Mattress Firm, those three locations are a technique that the company uses to capture shoppers and advertise. They effectively are one store with three storefronts. You go to the convenient location while the others are advertising in general. Even if a shop goes out of business, the turnover on the space means that the sign will stay up long enough to outweigh anything else as a de facto advert.
The mad lad actually went and did the math on the mattress firm conspiracy! Lmao I cannot wait until we as a society figure out what the deal is with these mattress stores. There simply MUST be something going on.
Crazy like a fox
All the money of the drug trade is laundered through mattress stores.
There is no grand conspiracy with mattresses. People just underestimate the importance of them. Your mattress is the single most important purchase you will ever make and that is not an exaggeration. You will spend 1/4th of your entire life on that mattress. It is not like a chair, couch, or TV which are optional purchases. Everyone needs a mattress as much as they need food and shelter. If you buy the wrong mattress you can kiss your health and quality of life goodbye. If you cannot get a good night sleep your health will deteriorate massively and it might even kill you. Mattresses are NOT interchangeable. Everyone has different needs and there are so many choices and options that can be tailored to fit those needs. This is why there are so many different mattress stores. You can't just go into one mattress store and pick out the cheapest one and think you got a good deal or made a smart purchase.
When people experience health decline most people look in all the wrong places for a cure. They go to doctors seeking drugs, pain killers, and anti-depressants or look to diet and exercise as the issue. Really one of the first places people should be looking at is their mattress. The way your body settles while sleeping will impact your breathing, put strain on your heart, and disrupt digestion leading to whole host of health problems. It is incredibly important that people buy the right mattress. If they don't they will regret it.
@@Novusod I went online bought one with a cool name and i sleep like the dead.
@@Novusod Spotted the mattress salesman
mattresses are a scam, and the profit margin is insane. i worked at sears and a co-worker would sell a mattress combo for thousands of dollars and the commission would justify an entire 8 hour shift even if they did nothing else all day. my parents went to a little family owned hole in the wall down the street and got the bed and box spring, frame, delivery and haul away, for under $500.
It's nuts
That’s right, mattresses are a scam. That’s why I sleep on the floor. Jk, but I do. Better for your posture and I’ve seen countless health improvements.
@@MrNoName7474Tatami and thin futon is the best sleeping surface I ever had. Soft and fluffy comfort but a firm area underneath giving support for sleeping.
@@MrNoName7474 The last time I tried sleeping on a floor I woke up after 3 hours in nasty amounts of pain. I'll stick to my bed....
I love how the bench at 11:42 just faces the wall.
Like just ignoring the fact that there's no sidewalk to get to it, they made it even worse by making it just face nothing instead of the wash behind it.
Feels like a dystopian art installation at that point.
Ray , you absolutely went off in this video. The walkway from the Outback to the Golden Corral is what I watch this channel for
Post modern Epstein island rococo: From the moment I started watching this video I've been kinda mystified by how when I was little my grandma lived across the road from a power center that looks exactly like this. The catch is that I live in Chile, in South America, so I can confirm they do look the same absolutely everywhere.
it's spreading
You can play an even more depressing version of guess the place with blurred-out signs in local language with power centers in places as different as Las Vegas, State of New York, Toronto, Monterrey, Cancun, Bogotá, Manaus, Santiago, Kingston, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, Moscow, Istanbul, Mumbai, Riyadh, Jakarta, Beijing, and even Osaka or Tokyo. You won't guess the place. They look like cookie cutter molds of American power centers.
I mean... shit, EVEN HAVANA HAS SHITTY ATTEMPTS OF MAKING A FRICKIN AMERICAN POWER CENTER. EVEN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES ARE COPYING THE QUINTESSENTIALLY CAPITALIST AMERICAN POWER CENTER.
Epstein Island Rococo
I used to live in Saudi and they’re everywhere and look exactly the same
Funny thing about all that parking space is that my parents will still complain about the 2 min walk from the back of the lot to the entrance of the store 🤦
And they should. I'd rather walk multiple blocks on a good main street than across a sun baked parking lot any day of the week.
Maybe they should have transit in the parking lot
Maybe the Boring Company can provide a solution for this problem? Taking stuff underground saves valuable parking space, and keeps people from getting a sunburn. 😂
I intentionally park farther from the entrance of these stores to minimize the odds of someone else damaging my car, and i don't mind the walk.
But basically all of these lots are massively over built to hold the theoretical max capacity of the store which might be hit for 1hr of black friday and not to keep the lot around 90% full durring "busy" hours.
Lol that’s a point I always bring up when people complain about having to walk to the bus or train stop
A few years ago, a defunct USG paper mill (where they literally made the paper that gets glued onto drywall at another location) near my house, but in the neighboring town, was redeveloped into a power center. Unlike nearby towns including the one where I live, this one had developed mostly after the Garden State Parkway was built through it in the 1950s, so it lacks any identifiable core or downtown. Their mayor insisted this power center was going to fix that, going so far as to note that the plan included a gazebo where people could gather and…sit and stare at each other staring at the traffic I guess. He specifically said teenagers could sit there “provided they act like young ladies and gentlemen!” Truly bizarre. Anyway, the gazebo really exists… wedged in a corner of the parking lot between an Applebee’s, a driveway cars regularly enter at 45 mph, a Vitamin Shoppe, and a huge drainage basin. Definitely a hub of civic life and definitely marking the entire project as an impeccable land use.
As one of the 1,500 living residents of Colma, I never thought my town would be mentioned on this channel. Aside from having invented the Power Center, we are also known for having 1000x more dead "residents" than live ones. I wonder if there's a video idea in there somewhere, small cities/towns that provide unique services to their larger city neighbors? Or cities with largest cemetery land usage (Halloween is coming up)?
tom scott did a video on colma and it's cemeteries
Man, you weirdos that start thinking Halloween right after Labor Day....... 🤦♂️
Exactly! Drive up the El Camino or 280 and you can’t miss the cemeteries! I’m from Gilroy
Please continue providing at least one extraordinarily sarcastic, snarky and condescending video like this once a quarter. It reinforces how screwed up land use is in the US. Thanks for doing what you're doing. Love every video.
As someone who lives in Edmonton, I found that intro insanely funny. South Edmonton Common is definitely notorious enough for this not to be some grand conspiracy 😂
Lloydminster, the small city on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border is almost exclusively Power Centers. All the Power Centers are along two central stroads. The city is about as anti-urbanist as one can get.
As a lifelong Vancouverite, I've never heard of the term "power centre" before. I feel for y'all.
Yup! This fellow Edmontonian can confirm the mess that is SEC. Totally makes WEM look like Oxford Circus of urbanity in comparison
@@forivall Vancouver has the world's least Costco-y Costco
@@forivall TIL Vancouver has an urban Costco at Stadium-Chinatown, somehow passed by it for years. Seems Vancity's power centres are as deep in as Richmond and Burnaby and North/West Van
Watching this reminded me a lot about where I grew up and how many times I saw the beginning and end of powercenter lifecycles. Those powercenters (and strip malls, and mall malls) and all of the infrastructure surrounding it made these towns feel a certain way. They felt sad because of the constant failure of ill-conceived retail concepts combined with the existential dread that only a large parking lot can instill. But they also felt optimistic with the spirit of commerce, McJobs, and that shiny new store feeling. As I'm getting older and have moved around the States a bit, I reflect on my teenage years spent bopping around powercenters and strip malls. Specifically, I think about those years where I was pining to get a car so I could get a taste of independence otherwise not possible. I wanted to cruise the powercenter/strip mall gauntlet at my leisure! I think about all of the money I sunk into an old car, the speeding ticket that cost me my license, the job that I had to fund the car that I needed the car to get to, the time I spent at that job when I could have been doing wholesome after school activities, the time I spent driving to the other side of town for no good reason, the late night drowsy drives home, and on and on. There were some fun times, and there were bad times, and there was also just me as a kid who didn't know any better, just trying to gain some independence. Not be hard on myself but I can't help but feel that I robbed myself a little. When the pro-car leaning (or anti-urban, anti-public transit) people talk about the independence and prosperity that an automobile can give, I think it tends to be a too cavalier towards the economics, particularly when you're just starting out as an adult. In reality, it seems like young people have to overextend themselves just to exist in powercenter suburbs. I know you've done a vid about the true costs of the car, and Not Just Bikes did a good one about NOT raising kids in the suburbs. I just wanted to share this anecdote/memory about growing up in the powercenter matrix.
Quality humor, intelligent assessments, historical context, geography, economic analysis. This episode had it all. I applaud you. Really doing the work. Thank you for raising the bar.
As a bay area native, I apologize for introducing big box-store power center designs to North America.
What's insane is on some of these power centers, they don't even want homeless people overnight in their vehicles.
Do you want homeless people in their vehicles in your driveway?
@@Santor- those aren't even comprarable. someone's home vs a massive empty useless field of tarmac.
That's the one good thing about many Walmarts. They allow road commuters or homeless people living in their cars to freely park overnight. They can even freshen up in the morning in their bathrooms.
@@Santor- The real question is inconvenience and are they making anyone uncomfortable. You do both if you're in someone's driveway. Parking way outside the normal daily use at a store, does neither.
@@Santor- That isn't remotely comparable. Double points for trying to insinuate that homeless people are like pests that you shouldn't want to be around. Buddy, they're PEOPLE. You're just mad that you have to witness poverty that you clearly don't care about.
Your Fry’s commentary hit home. I’m from the Bay Area. A computer nerd. I used to literally spends hours and hours here! It was like a nerd Disneyland. I was so upset when I found out they closed!!
When living in the Greater Madison Wisconsin area, one of their Walmart Supercenters had an apt innovation on the big box formula, ground floor parking. By bringing the vast majority of the parking into the overall footprint of the building, you not only didn't have the massive lots monopolizing usable space, but believe me, the sheltered parking was a godsend in the "brisk" Wisconsin winters. Plus you get to ride escalators to the store on the second floor. They even had specialized escalators for shopping carts. Now, I imagine such supercenters cost quite a bit more to build than the traditional single story affair, but they seem to me to be an excellent compromise between the vast asphalt deserts, and you know, actually getting people to come to the store. If one were to get a cluster of these, or even an entire mall together, you could even have open, elevated pedestrian space between the stores while hiding all that vital infrastructure underneath.
It’s almost like an urban mall with a parking garage or under ground parking 😉
Content suggestion: how heatwaves make these parking lots, stroads and sprawling interchanges into uninhabitable boiling hellscapes full of dust and fumes, made worse by the essential life-support of AC's fighting the hotgrill temperature above the tarmac.
As a Phoenician I'd like to second that suggestion. Walking across stroads and giant parking lots here in the summer is absolutely brutal.
That specific phenomenon is called the urban island heat effect. Some cities are making interesting adaptations to cool the city.
New York tried painting black roofs white to better reflect heat. Other cities are expanding the urban forest.
The widespread adoption of ACs have interesting intersections with American architecture as well
@@rosskgilmour Yes, I think PBS even did something recently on Urban Heat Island Effect
@@danieldaniels7571 people from Phoenix are actually called Phoenician?
What is mind-blowing about these power centers is that they need more than one parking spot for me. As the ones that are not multilevel are too big to walk to more than one store. It's ridiculous to drive from one side toy the other!
That's the smell of freedom!
@@JonZiegler6 hahahaha...tied to my "Wage Cage"
And so bad for the environment too. The amount of unnecessary emissions that produces is ridiculous. And don't forget those people who cruise the parking lot, emitting even more emissions, just find the nearest parking to the front because there's usually no viable walking path from the middle of the gigantic parking lot. It makes Americans even more lazy.
I hate how pedestrian-unfriendly they are. The giant buildings that make up a power center can only be approached from one side. The whole lot is fenced off too except the street-side, even if there's a perfectly useful sidewalk/mixed-use path that goes along that side.
I think simple design changes would make them more pedestrian-friendly. They could get more creative with where freight access is. They could stop pointlessly erecting fences between the stores and sidewalks for no other reason than "fuck pedestrians lmao". Maybe group the the smaller stores in a central block around a plaza or something. These small stores don't require a car to patronize them (unlike a Costco) and their close proximity would increase "internal capture" done by foot. Seems like an easy way to increase utilization of parking spaces.
Too bad these are so cheaply built and constrained by land use codes that simple changes will probably never be implemented. Both the developers and the local govt's giving the developers tax breaks are wasting the land at their disposal. The whole suburban land waste culture needs to be overturned.
Yes this is true. I live in Las Vegas and have been to the study area many times. There are many other power centers like the study area in Las Vegas and I’ve left Target and driven down to Petco, all while staying in the same power center.
I actually work at a mattress store, and if you get a cheap mattress they usually last about 5-6 years. And a lot of people end up buying mattresses for their kids, or for guest rooms. Another common thing I see is people either getting the wrong mattress, or their body changes, and suddenly their mattress isn't comfortable anymore.
As a fellow Las Vegas resident I am amazed you make it around without a car! And yes… seeing the abandoned Fry’s at Town Square is sad to anyone with a heart.
"Let's take a moment to remember the big boxes we've lost ..." 🤣 Pure comedic gold!
I have good memories of every single one of those places. Especially Fry's 😢
@@CityNerd Surprised to see Future Shop. Thought they were exclusively Canadian. Looks like they had some US locations though.
@@CityNerd I do fondly remember outings to browse with my nerdy friends, but I don't remember buying much. By the time I had money to spend, weekend computer shows at convention centers/fairgrounds, eBay, and other Internet retailers were the only places I bought things you could find at places like Fry's.
@@CityNerd I cried when I heard that Fry's didn't survive the pandemic. At least we still have microcenter!
@@CityNerd I also have fond memories of Fry's, mostly from the late 90s/early 2000s. They were in serious decline for years before the Pandemic and final death rattle.
We don't escape from these in Europe either. I had to go to one of these places when trying to find an Ikea in Sweden of all places. At least they're somewhat walkable. There's one near me in France. Totally car-dependant.
I would love to see a video on projects where giant parking lots were ripped up and converted to new, mixed-use development. I think it's part of the future as land that was previously cheap enough to waste on parking has increased in value to the point where redevelopment makes sense.
I know this is 10 months late, but my town just did this with one (well, like 3/4 of one) power center.
I lived in a neighborhood very close to this exact "power center" from 2001-2010. This sort of zoning is what influenced my move to a different city and a neighborhood with urbanist design. It looks the area has changed very little in twelve years.
I always considered the area overdeveloped with retail, but they continued to build more and more new retail space even as other retail spaces in the area sat empty. I recall there were plenty of empty storefronts there after the 2008 recession; it looks like that has improved some from your video. It was always a chore to drive through the area and shop around there. Looks like you spent a good amount of time filming in the area; what a miserable time that must have been.
The last point you made about DOT priorities and city priorities is so true. The disconnect between municipal planning and DOTs is INFURIATING, especially for the DOT.
A move to regional planning eliminating municipality planning would be best in my opinion. Muncipilaties just create; inefficieny ,waste, and delay in projects.
@@bkayganich There already are regional planning agencies for all of the major metropolitan regions in the United States. The problem is that they don't evaluate and work with every municipality about what is planned. They also have no power in establishing regional planning policy for municipalities and thus can only reccomend things, which are only sometimes implemented.
Is it cause DOTs care about nothing other than solving transportation problems and have little concern for other variables?
I'd like to give credit where it's due: 8:26 Texas Roadhouse has probably the best bike parking facility of any retail establishment in the Galleria.
And nowhere to bike safely🤣
Yeah, I do believe City of Henderson requires bike parking on new developments and that Texas Roadhouse is pretty new
I worked at a fast food restaurant for a few years, and the multi-lane drive-thru was horrible. One driver would constantly cut off the other driver, even if the other driver was finished first, so the order of the orders in the system wouldn't match the lineup of vehicles. Lots of mixups, and because we were trying to get through orders as fast as possible, and things always got hectic (because the multi-lane stuff was put in to "address a higher volume of drivers than we could handle before", aka a highly stressful amount of drivers), we would forget to check every single time. And the constant honking...
I really enjoy this and other city planning TH-cam channels! Thank you so much!
I've got a cargo bike and it works great for Costco runs. Also, Cycle Gear is for motorcycles.
Agreed! No reason to avoid Costco on a bike when doing a typical Costco run. I've got a 80L backpack which works perfectly for my typical Costco haul. Add in some panniers if you're buying more and you're set!
I had to scroll so far to find someone mentioning Cycle Gear. Lol
I'd love to see a version of poor versus good uses of land academia edition. I've worked at various institutions which had different views on parking and transit so I imagine there are interesting examples of commuter schools. Maybe even some interesting residential schools.
I imagine for academia, schools would love to build parking garages but local zoning forbids them, so you get massive parking lots.
Oh that's a good idea Martin
Great idea! @CityNerd should give a shout out to my school, the OG free private university of NY, The Cooper Union
@@CityNerd see if Davie’s education center is worth talking about… Davie has made some questionable decisions lately.
youtube recommended this channel and i love the unapologetic critiques of stuff like this. clearly it's intended to be humorous but also a very real problem with space utilization, as you point out
I love this channel. CityNerd videos are unmatched at highlighting and dissecting the absurd details of North America’s built environment. Also I will always be devastated by the disappearance of Fry’s Electronics :(
My friends and I play a game of screenshotting malls and their parking lots and comparing it to blocks of downtown in european cities. It never gets old seeing giant swaths of land that could fit an entire 15 minute walkable neighborhood be basically a desert of asphalt in the middle of a city. You can also play this game with downtown Houston instead of a suburban mall.
Have you ever walked around downtown Houston?
I've lived in Europe for a few years and once you get out of the touristy areas there are lots of car dependent towns just like the USA. In Italy they had a nice chain of gas station eateries with sandwiches and coffee but it's not like people didn't drive.
Europe has lots of retail parks that look exactly the same as that. The architecture tends to be a bit more boring, just a painted steel box with a sign above the door, but otherwise the same.
@@ddtstrc9678 no they haven’t. They probably saw the infamous picture of downtown Houston from the ‘70s and haven’t bothered to look at what Houston actually looks like since.
downtown/midtown/montrose Houston is nothing like those 70's pics today. there are still surface lots to be found but walk/bike infra has significantly improved especially over the last decade. Houston actually has a fairly elaborate master plan of bike networks so I really hope to see (born bias) Houston overtake Austin as the Texas bike city!
A video on cities who are actively working to make things better would be awesome. For example, Dallas and the new D2 subway and canyon projects for highway atrocities, or OKC who recently rerouted an entire interstate and filled the space with walkable parks and a streecae
car**
This is the first video of yours I'm watching and I love how increasingly deadpan and sarcastic it gets as it progresses.
New subscriber! Man I love these informative videos! You are in my top 10 of TH-camrs!!!!!
I am from a very walkable and aesthetic place in Central Europe, and I (truly) don't want to step on some toes here, so I will just say I find these videos very curious and anthrophological indeed.
most americans own their own homes. I think the rate is 65% or so. some of those are apartments which are legal property as well. My entire family who are zero gen immigrants from eastern europe all own homes and cars. part of owning a home is taking care of it and that's what home depot and lowes are. they sell everything from tools to building materials to appliances, roofing and thousands of other things. hobby lobby is a crafts store to buy stuff for your kids to make stuff with. nobody wants these stores and the resulting traffic near their house so we have shopping centers you usually have to drive to. the sheer amount of different stores we have here for different things makes it impossible to put them in cities or even in one place. you can find different style historical buildings here too but the US population has tripled in the last 100 some years along with easy home loans and these kinds of stores are built outside city centers where the rent is too expensive. on top of this many contractors you hire to work on your home are small time don't buy wholesale and also go to these stores to buy supplies for jobs
As an American I'll step on our own toes, these places are ugly and could definitely half the parkinglot sizes and not suffer any lost buisness. (Extend black Friday to a full week and the big rush could be distributed to not need everybody fighting for a space in an 8hr window)
I fully understand the need for places like Lowe's & The Home Depot to provide access to basic home maintenance materials to enable DIY projects and not mandate the use of contractors. (You can set up deliveries so you could theoretically bike to Lowe's and pay for a delivery of a bunch of shingles and plywood to replace your roof, but if you just want 6 2x4s then using your car/truck is easier/cheaper)
it's the same as europe. you can go to venice or whatever and see all the ruins and the tourist stuff but it's not like most of the locals live in that part of venice. walk to the edge and you see glass tower office parks and italy is full of car dependent suburbia too with big box stores and office parks. same here. the video is from near las vegas. you can fly in there and the hotels are beautiful and close to the airport. you can walk the strip and not see a single home depot or whatever. The hotels are full of crazy expensive restaurants that i've spent lots of money in at hundreds of dollars a meal. they are also full of expensive shopping for the visitors. but it's not where the locals live and not where the stuff they need to buy is. it's all in the outskirts in shopping centers like this.
You dont need to worry about stepping on toes. These types of developments are objectively awful. All the older walkable cities are more expensive than suburbia, so people like to flock there. There needs to be smarter developments being built for sure.
I have always thought that mattress stores were somehow involved in money laundering. I live in a city of about 60,000 people, yet we have about 3 of these big mattress stores and a Costco selling mattress along with furniture stores.
I think 10 years is a low number to change mattresses, I doubt most people change every 10 years.
I have always questioned how these places stay open.
Perfect mix of information, editing and comedy - youre one of my fave youtubers
The fact that you are showcasing my stomping grounds so thoroughly is making me feel weird.
But at least now I can show to my friends what I've been talking about all of these years!
Love for Fry's! I only got two years of having one nearby, but so many great memories, riding public transit just to get those 5 screws and that 120mm fan for your PC build. Heck, I think we took a ferry and a train to get the proper SSD mounting. Snagged that last flat screen just before the walls came down on the store. So sad. Love this content, I was always obsessed with these centers as a kid, but then after growing up and getting a GIS degree, really started to see what these really were. I am also "not that fun" to go shopping with, and have empathy for your feelings on those mall food smells.
Topic: Are current use tax structures a scam? As an inhabitant of a rural community and an agriculture background, I think they're great but I understand why they should be debated.
Not Just Bikes/Strong Towns did a video on it, and yes we're all subsidizing car-centric suburbs. Cities generate more taxes than it costs to run services, the excess revenue goes to suburbs so they get more services (roads, sewer, etc) than they actually pay for. Suburbs take cheap land from rural/farming communities and build on it with tax money taken from cities, and never collect enough taxes to pay back a fair amount to either.
On the plus side of mega malls & power centers: City buses always go there, there are places to sit down, if it's an indoor center, poor people can get out of bad weather. Some have a play area for kids, many have a grocery store nearby where poor people can pick up a snack, go into the mall, sit down, and eat it. (Food in the food courts is too expensive for many). As a carless senior who needs to sit down sometimes, I'm dismayed at how rare a simple urban seating area can be.
just found your channel, this video was amazing. can't believe i haven't heard of you before but I'm definitely subscribing for more stuff like this, great work
I heard mattresses sell at an intense markup (as customers rarely know their true value) so very few sales can sustain a store. This was discussed on the Freakonomics episode "Are We in a Mattress-Store Bubble?" :)
The excessive amount of Mattress Firm location near each other in this video is probably the result of them buying out many of their competitors.
@@danieldaniels7571 Or they might be willing to operate a low margins in the hopes of outlasting competitors, so they can regain market share
Mattresses are super cheap to make these days, but more importantly mattress stores are tax havens/money laundering operations.
I'd like someone to prove you wrong
Me too!
Another 10/10. You've been killing it lately.
Such interesting information and insights about our everyday experience. Thanks!
@ 7:15 - Bedbugs? Areas with high-turnover rental apartments or other insect-spreading factors may have higher mattress disposal rates than other areas. This unpleasant problem has gotten worse in recent years.
That’s some thing no one thought of yet in the comments. You may have a point.
I found your channel yesterday, I've been binge watching your videos. I'm glad your content exist.
This is becoming one of my favorite channels. If you ever get a chance check out the city of Elk Grove, California. It probably hits every example of poor land use (and ridiculous water wasting public landscaping) you highlight on your channel. And it’s full of power centers and traffic nightmares.
Totally agree on your assessment of Fry's. That was probably my favorite "big box". Great video.
I love how dry and straightforward his delivery always is.
Edmonton represent! In the worst possible way lmao. South Edmonton common is a hellscape, but did you know that 2 years ago the city eliminated all parking minimums? This frozen wasteland is its own oxymoron, but you learn to love it.
Fellow Edmontonian. Our city, as car infested as it currently is, is making alot of the correct choices for future urban development :) here's hoping it sticks
Considering you're one of the few Canadian cities that didn't huddle along the American border for warmth, I'm not surprised that design centered around staying inside warm cars
This video explains a lot about Edmonton.
About a year ago I watched a video on how a woman dressed for winter in the "coldest city in the world". I thought this would be useful, as I live car free in a very cold city and could use ideas for what to wear for office commutes on sub-zero (F) days.
No luck ... the Edmontonian's idea of cold weather gear was just barely enough to get from a parked car into a super store. She wasn't even buttoning her coat! I complained, the Scandinavian and Russian women watching complained ... and now I know why. Nobody in Edmonton is outside in winter for more than the 2 minute walk through a parking lot!
There's a huge different in winter wear here between those who commute exclusively by car, and those who transit/walk. Frankly it drives me a bit mental to hear some locals complain about the cold when the only time they experience it is as they scamper between their home/workplace and their car.
@@LoneHowler Winnipeg actually has worse and colder winters then Edmonton. Also, I dont believe the cold constitutes an excuse for why a city cannot be walkable or centered around transit. If anything, I think it makes a better argument for why a city should be walkable.
Excellent episode! That was very interesting. And by interesting, I mean horrifying.
A compromise solution for land use and walkability would be to place parking behind or below, but this would cost money and require consulting a first-semester architecture student for 10 minutes.
I love your caustic and sardonic presentations. I do not know whether I should laugh or cry. I live in Ottawa Canada which has many beautiful green spots and is close to nature, but it also has Smart centers which just like the Power centers in your video.
Thanks for the Vancouver WA shoutout lmao. The I-5 bridge replacement project and the opposition to light rail is insane. Race to the bottom indeed.
I'm really grateful for experts in the field telling us their experiences. It helps us to see potential in our own environments!
I gotta tell you that I just recently discovered your channel and am so totally enjoying the comedic aspect. We really do live in a weird, screwed-up built environment. When I moved to a warmer location in 2018, one of my criteria was a Costco nearby, after living 16 years in the Costco desert around Albany, NY (I understand this is now changing.) I have been to a few Costcos and one common characteristic is that there is never enough parking, regardless of how they calculate the needed number of spaces. Driving up and down parking-lot aisles hoping to catch someone backing out. I’ve figured out how to hack my local Costco parking, but the popularity of this brand is something that should be studied.
"postmodern Epstein Island Roccocco"....that line made my day.
In St. Louis our Ikea is near a light rail station, and there’s a good accessible pedestrian route to reach it. Some parking is under the store.
We’ve had a Target for a while that most parking is also under the store. Right now a new building is under construction that will have a Target/parking below apartments - all next to a light rail station and on the route of our busiest bus route.
Our biggest suburban power center is Chesterfield Commons, with 5 anchors and 821k + GLA - all on land that flooded in 1993. Nearby Chesterfield Mall will be razed to build a town center.
Target has been a little more forward-thinking about building compact formats in urban contexts. I like Ikea -- you can definitely bike there, pick your stuff out and just have it delivered.
@@CityNerd In the 32 years since I first shopped at an IKEA I’ve shopped at a total of at least 7 different locations. Yes, some of those trips I bought lots of stuff, filling. I’ve also had furniture delivered and assembled. But a majority of my trips have been small purchases or just to grab a bite and browse. It’s one light rail station away, back toward my place, so I often stop after cancer treatment.
Dang your videos keep getting better and better!
I wanted to make an interesting comment in that Ray showed an intersection that is insanely interesting. There are five Starbucks within a half mile radius, viewable in the map image shown in the video. It has been noted before that at morning rush hour, all five locations have long lines to get coffee. It doesn’t get any better than this! I love your videos and can’t wait to see more. Keep it up! ^_^
Whoa, a signalized intersection costs at least a half million dollars? Wow. This is definitely a topic we civilians have a poor grasp of, just how much auto transportation infrastructure costs. We always hear how much train infrastructure would cost, but never auto infrastructure.
Wow I also had no idea some car infrastructure besides highways would cost so much!
doesn't take much of a highway bldg project to cost $1,000,000,000.
Lovely video! Actually laughed 3 times. Also proud to say my local stroad is missing both Costco and Walmart.
Great video! My old neighborhood of Oakley in Cincinnati struggled with adding a power center over the last five years. The core neighborhood was a nice walkable place with a fun Main Street and a square. Some large manufacturing centers cleared out of the neighborhood nearby and they decided to build essentially a power center with poor traffic design throughout the whole plot of land. With so much newly available land in the main city many of us hoped for more thoughtful use of that land to expand our fun, walkable neighborhood. Instead we got a power center monstrosity with horrible traffic patterns right next to the highway entrance. The neighborhood became a little two faced with the nice walkable neighborhood, and the car centric power center monstrosity of Oakley Station
I’m getting “How to with John Wilson” vibes with this video. Your delivery and ability to create punchlines with video of bad urban design is gripping. 👍
Video recommendation: The most and least sprawly rail networks
This is inspired by comparisons I saw on Twitter of Seattle's system overlaid with Paris. Also, Vancouver and Vienna have metro systems of similar total track length but a look at the system maps shows they're completely different.
those are not cities that should be compared. paris and vienna are national capitals, and are geographically close to other major cities. seattle and vancouver aren't even the capitals of their own provinces, and are only close to each other. also, the paris metro area is huge, like the population of washington state and BC combined.
it would be interesting if you looked at "lintbebouwen" or "lace building" a horrible practice of Belgium in the post war construction boom of building suburban housing along seemingly endless mainish roads instead of building actual, like, towns or villages
I would definitely have to go to Belgium to ground-truth this
@@CityNerd I'll show you around! it's a great country with both amazing and terrible planning, often in basically the same place!
your snark & sarcastic drawling is *my* palette cleanser. Bravo and carry on
Loved the depth in this one!
oh goodness, there's a word for these places!
There's many of them in nashville's suburbs... the biggest case studies I can think of are Mt. Juliet's Providence shopping plaza. like 7 big box stores with a smaller 'outdoor mall' kind of setup. if you want to hit the big box stores you have to basically drive or walk a distance.
Another huge power center would probably be Indian Lake in Hendersonville, which is probably worse, because the big box store areas span across an arterial road, requiring pedestrians to cross a 6-lane divided highway.
The amount of shopping centers in nashville suburbs is countless and pretty egregious. I hate it here! :D
I’d say Murfreesboro is even worse than Nashville at this point.
Given the astronomically high margins on mattresses (thousands for a block of foam) you'd only need to sell a handful of mattresses a day to break even. Not to mention all of the add-ons they throw on top of the mattress like sheets, pillows, protectors that basically adds up to another mattress. 55/ day split up among that many stores actually checks out.
The bizarre thing too is that Power Centres are horrid places to go in the winter, which represents a lot of Edmonton's climate. At least a covered mall provides a respite from the weather. Power Centres do not. As a retired urban designer (in Canada), i always favoured trying to take a small fraction of the power centre parking and converting it to a multi family complex. Not seeing it happen anytime soon mind you
that power centre in the bay area does not convert well in edmt.
Hey Ray, I very much enjoyed this. I think an entire video on parking minimums would indeed be a good idea
I really look forward to the rest of this series! After the "heinous land uses" series, I think it would be really interesting to see a series of "good land uses" based on current projects. One that comes to mind is the recent conversion of an old railroad yard in southwest St. Paul, MN. I think the development is called "Highland Bridge" and it looks like a really nice mixed use, mixed-housing density development.
As a corollary, I think it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the economics of high-density housing (i.e. how 4 over 1 housing has become the economically optimal form of housing across a large swath of the US) and the breakeven analysis for a new 4:1 development or something similar like duplexes, higher rising apartments, etc.
Good land uses are parks, forests, transport orientated developments, high density housing. that's mostly been covered on this channel already :)
True, those are all the elements of good land use, which Ray has done a good job covering so far, I just think it would be interesting to see some good examples of cohesive redevelopment incorporating all of those things.
Also, the economics of dense housing/P&L for developers, etc could be an entire series itself, which is a topic I think many people would be interested in
@@nikolaigrabowski1 is it really happening to a degree you can see concrete results? I don't disagree with you at all, I'm just not sure you can find a space that was redeveloped like that sure, places that were built that way originally (like Rosslyn outside of DC), but not redeveloped,or maybe I'm wrong :)
Also, it's really impossible to measure the economic value of a park or forest, even if we intrinsically know it's high
What do you mean when you say 4 over 1 housing? You mean like an apartment building with 4 stories, but reserves shops and services in the ground floor?
I got to stay in that mall overnight a few years ago and supervise a flash renovation of a store, it was a really neat experience having the run of an empty mall at 3am. There has to be miles of service corridors and the management keeps that building up very nicely. Except for the freight elevator, necessitating a long haul from another wing (our store was in the basement portion of the first floor).
I think it was built in 1995/96, at least that's how old the building systems were. Nice place. Used to come up from Kingman and visit ages ago.
As a salesperson, it always stuck in my head that a mattress salesman once told me; the margins are so high on mattress sales that most shops need to sell one mattress a day to cover their costs and stay open.
Given that, it wouldn’t surprise me if a larger store only needed to sell 2-3 a day to turn a profit, which is pretty mind blowing to me
Man, you read my mind. Before you even mentioned it, but in the very middle of your anti bigbox jeremiad, i was thinking back fondly to the old days and my many visits to good old Fry's Electronics!
I feel honored that your memorialized Future Shop for all Canadians 😁
I am a disabled driver and I guess if you are careful, you can get away with parking your bike near a disabled parking spot, but I still wouldn't recommend it. It is a risk you are taking on behalf of someone else's accessibility...which is kinda a dick move. Instead, fight for proper bike infrastructures. Also, as a mobility scooter user, I love good biking infrastructures :P
I do my best not to block any ramp access, but the disabled parking sign post is often the only option. ☹️. Aside from pestering the CVS manager (again,) do you have any tips for shaking bike parking out of corporate chain stores? Is there a person at the head office I should be annoying?
@@HarryLovesRuth A petition might have more effect. Otherwise you could try to convince local government to pass laws mandating adequate biking infrastructure. If all else fails, civil disobedience might be the only way. Get your biking friends to tie up hundreds of bikes to those signs. For such a protest occasion, since it is a one time thing, I doubt disabled people will be super upset.
@@HarryLovesRuth find out who actually owns the shopping center and bother them.
I did tech support for mall stores back in the day, so it's always cool to see the malls in video essays and dead mall reviews!
Las Vegas and suburbs look absolutely depressing to me. Thank you for the Power Center seminar.