After the shoppers have gone

Modern mausoleum
London, ON
August 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before:

Way back in the 1980s, city planners approve the development of a giant mall smack in the middle of a vibrant downtown shopping district. Entire blocks are levelled to make room for a concrete and glass monstrosity that they dub Galleria London.

Almost as soon as it opens, it struggles. Shoppers prefer suburbia, apparently, and not some windowless mausoleum with underground, pay-by-the-hour parking and lousy transit. Major anchors gradually shrink their footprint, then shut down entirely.

Worse, the streets around the Galleria suffer, too, and before long many of the retailers there, too, start to close for good. Downtown London soon becomes a place to be avoided after dark.

Over the ensuing decades, the Galleria is renamed - now known as Citi Plaza - and is somewhat reborn as a mixed use complex filled with offices, schools, and city services. The Bay department store is rebuilt into the showpiece Central Library, a shining example of how publicly accessible literacy and community-building done right.

It isn’t anywhere near the original vision, but that’s pretty much how the universe operates: plans are made, then everything changes. Manyana.

Ill-starred history aside, it’s a resonant place to explore, particularly as the sun begins to set and the worker-bees head home. The silence is deafening. The lessons this place has for us? Probably not being heard.

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