The Mall in Columbia and the Planned City
When James Rouse dedicated Wilde Lake village in 1967, he was not simply carving cul-de-sacs into former farmland. He was staging an argument against the American city as it then existed – segregated, haphazard, and short on charm.
Columbia, Maryland, would be different: a complete, self-sustaining city, respectful of the land, nurturing to its people, and, ideally, profitable. At the heart of this experiment, he placed not a courthouse or a church, but a mall.
Work on The Mall in Columbia began in 1970 on a 170-acre site about 21 miles southwest of downtown Baltimore, right between Baltimore and Washington…