Peter Calthorpe Proposes Turning Dying California Strip Malls into Much‑Needed Housing

By Lloyd Kahn on December 17, 2020

Strip malls are dying, largely due to online sales and, most recently, the Covid crisis. Architect Peter Calthorpe proposes redeveloping this land to provide housing. For example, the roughly 40-mile strip called El Camino Real between San Francisco and San Jose, California — which includes Silicon valley — could be utilized to provide housing in one of the highest-rent areas of the world. Here is Peter’s proposal:

To Solve California’s Housing Crisis, Reinvent the Strip (PDF)

Peter Calthorpe Proposes Turning Dying California Strip Malls Into Much-Needed Housing

Before

After

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
Tags: ,

One Response to Peter Calthorpe Proposes Turning Dying California Strip Malls into Much‑Needed Housing

  1. This makes tremendous sense. Also note that it would be wise to convert old dying large department stores to condominiums. One example would be Union Square in San Francisco. This once high end shopping district has been in a slow decline since the 1960’s. Could there be a more centrally located area surrounded by Muni, BART, with a short stroll to office towers, and ferries in the Bay Area?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Please use your real name instead of your company name or keyword spam.