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Wire <br /> face <br /> Recently, the focus of leading-edge metropolitan planners has begun to shift <br /> from reinventing America's downtowns to reinventing its newer concentra- <br /> tions of commercial growth- its suburban strips. This shift reflects the growing <br /> success of many downtown revitalization efforts- a success based on decades of <br /> public/private partnerships, planning, investment, and development. It also rec- <br /> ognizes that the ways to revitalize downtowns now are largely agreed upon. <br /> The shift of focus reflects a further reality. Current patterns of growth and <br /> development along America's suburban commercial strips are unsustainable. <br /> The aggregate effects of well-performing commercial developments that are <br /> geographically close but not physically integrated are becoming untenable. <br /> As problems increase in older suburban corridors, and as consumer shopping <br /> patterns change, the future of strip development is becoming less certain. <br /> Increasingly, suburbanites are calling for a greater sense of community and <br /> convenience in their lives, and the Urban Land Institute believes that these <br /> • demands challenge the continuing competitiveness and sustainability of aging <br /> suburban strips. To this end, it has developed ten smart growth principles to <br /> help suburban strips evolve in ways that meet the market demands of the new <br /> economy, the new consumer, and the new face of retailing. <br /> While suburban strips often represent incredible economic vitality- they are, <br /> after all, the places where most Americans shop- they are terra incognito in <br /> terms of understanding the ways they are evolving, the forces that are buffeting <br /> them, the shapes they are taking, and <br /> the roles they will play in the new <br /> ,''' economy. They have largely been <br /> { ignored as places for serious study, and <br /> .a' their fate usually has been left to the <br /> marketplace with few models of how <br /> future growth should be channeled and <br /> I 'ate, <br /> ` coordinated comprehensively to make <br /> ' , <br /> communities more livable. <br /> 0,1 <br /> What we do know about suburban <br /> ' . _ i strips is apparent to anyone who <br /> visits them: typically, they are one- <br /> dimensional forms of development <br /> that lack a distinct sense of place or <br /> ocommunity and that increasingly are <br /> a , `, R k plagued by problems to do with frag- <br /> iv <br />