I grew up in the mall. It was the defining space of my youth, commercialism, sprawl, and the American way. They were our playgrounds, our escape, our places of endless possibilities (if only we could afford them).  There was not a better place to be than the mall on a Tuesday after school.

The mall created this illusion of freedom.  A controlled space where kids played, parents shopped, and the elderly sat on benches and watched the world walk by. Now the world has passed them by, they are the ruins of late capitalism. My goal with this project is to find how an empty husk of capitalism can re-engage with the community it left behind. 

What can and what should replace them?  What is civic space in suburbia in the digital age? Can post-capitalistic spaces still hold and generate value?  By taking one example and pushing it into a variety of possibilities, until pieces start to fall into place, this proposal shows how these spaces, that hold a nostalgia that is real, can hold a future that is just as real.