SBAN Director on Ethnocentric Mall Revamps & Repurposed Downtown Office Buildings
SBAN Director Willow Lung-Amam was cited in a New York Times opinion piece about retrofitting dead or dying shopping malls. The article pointed to her research on how suburban indoor malls are being retrofitted to serve what are now majority Asian and Latino communities, often providing a home for local small businesses instead of national chains.
Lung-Amam was also quoted in a recent article in The Globe and Mail about how cities and developers are thinking about converting vacant office buildings for other commercial and residential uses in the wake of the pandemic. Cities should ensure these adapted spaces are affordable and welcoming for small businesses, she says. SBAN advisory board member Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, was also quoted about what it takes to remake downtowns.
