Fashion Island Case Study

The Fashion Island enjoys topographical advantages when it located near the famous Newport Beach and comprised with a variety of high-end commercial building, including financial office, Newport Beach Marriott hotel & Spa and Newport Beach country Club on the south and southeast. When the nearby Newport beach has the highest concentration of wealth in Southern California and even is the home of the famous local entrepreneurs including McKee & Company Home and Jack’s Surfboards. The Fashion Island considers the local residence along the Newport Beach and the coastal resort as the major market. With the open-air regional shopping center and sidewalks which connected with the Newport Beach, the shopping mall successfully achieves the goal
Even though Fashion Island has a favorable geographical and exceptional urban design, when it was built in 1967, it was an unobtrusive shopping mall which facing the pressure of insufficient customer. At that time, JC Penny was the first major chain store marched into the shopping mall, however, it took 15 years for the center's owners to eventually realize that the JC Penny has already failed the attractive for the customer in the Newport Beach whose has the highest income in the Orange County. In the recent years, the center’s owner started replacing the lower-end merchants opened shop, like JC Penny by attracting new upscale tenants and restaurants including LOUIS VUITTON AT NEIMAN MARCUS, Bloomingdale's 59th & Lex Cafe and one of the first Bloomingdale’s on the West Coast. The Irvine Company added up more than 90 tenants and even plans to spend $4 million for the new landscaping. The changing on the nature of stores and target customers became a renovation.When sales volume and consumption of the Fashion Island have been dramatically increased by the wealthy shoppers, it no longer caters the need of the working-class community or Lower middle
The public domain likes the Fashion Island is theoretically accessible to all. Everyone including the homeless people should have the right of admittance. However, while I carefully observed the environment and the design of the facility, I found out that the shopping mall is being colonized to only favor the consumption activity which developed by the private owner. The design of the Fashion Island not only secretly manipulates the activity and behaviors of people, but also applying an unpleasant design in the open space to create restrictions on public space access, especially to the homeless people. For example,to discourage homeless people to use the shopping mall as a nigh shelter for resting and sleeping, many of the benches are replaced by the wooden armchairs and there has only a few left located near the fountain. Some of the benches even design with armrests so the homeless may not able to comfortably lie down. As Mike Davis in the “Fortless Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space”acknowledges that, “the city is engaged in a relentless struggle to make the streets as unlivable as possible for the homeless and the poor” (Davis ) Without a doubt, the design of the public facilities like the armchair in