globeandmail.com: Now on sale in aisle one: Class warfare

The city has rejected the development on the grounds that the land was zoned as "employment," and retail, with its low-paying jobs, doesn't qualify.

Neighbourhood groups have resisted the development, citing the increase in traffic and air pollution, and what they feel is an unimaginative and unproductive use of the land. The developer, the emphatically named Smart!Centres Inc. Power Centres, SmartCentres and Wal-Mart super centres that loom in the suburbs like the doomed heads of Easter Island.

The model submitted to the OMB shows two- and three-storey red-brick façades with a generous pedestrian corridor, though it may be anchored by the devil itself, Wal-Mart. Titled the "Foundry District Lifestyle Centre," it is a stealth mall. And this at a time when the city is famously broke.

The debate has been framed in terms of community and money, but at the heart is the nature of malls themselves. TWO KINDS OF MALLS' Malls are like nuclear warheads, each one created to counteract one that already exists, and if possible, destroy it, or render it obsolete. Their evolution is partly social and cultural, and is glimpsed in comedian Chris Rock's observation: "There's two kinds of malls. The one where the white people shop, and the one where they used to shop."

The mall where they used to shop may end up being Gerrard Square, several blocks north of the Leslieville project. For a number of years, I lived nearby, an area that was "in transition," as the real-estate agents say.

It featured a mix of gentrifying young couples, a resident ethnic mélange of Asians, Blacks, Sikhs and Turks, as well as combustible porch-sitting hillbillies, the residue of the white working class that occupied the area for decades.

Ten years ago, Gerrard Square was anchored by Simpsons and Zellers and there were a few chains, but there were also independent stores, and an ever-changing market filled with carts selling off-brand vegetable dicers, perfumes that were a syllable away from greatness (Entity, Obsessed), jeans by, yes, Galvin Klein, discount ceramics, and stuffed animals trapped in balloons.

A man occasionally sold meat out of a gym bag near the mall entrance. On the weirdness scale, only the Dufferin Mall could touch it. But it was a fair reflection of the neighbourhood. As the area gentrified and the disused factories converted to lofts, Gerrard Square began to reflect that change.

A Home Depot arrived, along with Staples and Winners, and the mall underwent an expensive renovation. The guy with the gym bag moved on. But it is a fragile alliance between mall and neighbourhood. Stores continue to come and go.

The siren bargains of Wal-Mart will lure some shoppers south certainly, and Gerrard Square could retreat to its eclectic Third Worldism, a casualty. TRAGIC FLAW Every retail concept is born with a tragic flaw that eventually kills it. Somewhere, an idea is already hatching to kill the unbuilt SmartCentres, kill its ersatz streetscape and two-for-one sales, its cute tops and discount jeans.

What then? In The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, a collection of essays edited by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaus, the mall is a preoccupation.

Rather than shopping (as an activity) taking place in the city (as a place)," writes John McMorrough, "the city (as an idea) takes place within shopping (as a place)." Continued on Page 2. The photo is dead.

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