Ellen Dunham-Jones literally has written the book on suburban redevelopment. Her effort, “Retrofitting Suburbia,” came out in 2009 (ahead of its time). She is working on its latest update.
So, when the Georgia Tech professor came to Rutgers University to discuss her decades of research on the subject, it wasn’t hard for her to point out some of the numerous municipalities around the country that are solving their problems with dying (or closed) malls or vacated suburban office parks.
Belmar, in Lakewood, Colorado, was one of the first malls to be recreated in what Dunham-Jones called the new urbanism, which is an urban mixed-used facility in a suburban location.