Comment by once banned twice shy on February 15, 2013 at 4:03pm

RLAD, last time I went to WalMart I parked next to a late model Chrysler station wagon which someone was clearly living out of.  I spotted exactly zero "pimped-out Escalades."  So, no, I don't understand what you are trying to say.  Maybe my ears aren't exactly tuned for the type of dog whistle you are sending?

Comment by Hunter on February 15, 2013 at 8:11pm

obts - Video killed the radio star and suburban malls killed downtowns.

Comment by Phil_0 on February 16, 2013 at 10:25am

Hunter - while that's certainly true, it's possibly less true in Albuquerque than in older cities. In 1940 the populations of Albuquerque was 35,449. In 1970 it was 225,000. Suburban, car-oriented development was already underway by the late 1940s (Nob Hill and the Highland addition) and businesses were already moving away from downtown. This development was centrifugal by its nature and by the time the malls were constructed in the early 1960s downtown had long ceased to be a "center" in any meaningful economic sense. Rather than the leading edge of development like many big box commercial centers now, the malls were actually quite central in terms of the 1950s and 1960s city plan...the contemporary Hoffmantown Shopping Center and Manzano High School are a lot further out than Coronado is.

So while Coronado and Winrock certainly contributed to the decline of ABQ's downtown, that decline was well advanced long before the malls were built. And while the neighborhoods of the 50s and 60s are "sprawl" in the sense they represent car-oriented centrifugal building rather than density around an urban core, they remain significantly more walkable and accessible than more recent, un-gridded sprawl development with its big box stores and miles of parking lots.

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