Since 2000, two new shopping malls have sprung up inside a three mile radius. What kind of town am I? Some western boom-berg still rolling.... Since 2000, two new shopping malls have sprung up inside a three mile radius. What kind of town am I? Some western boom-berg still rolling out tracts homes like gardeners roll out sod? An exurb, perhaps, whose residents finally realize that they hate driving thirty miles for supplies? Los Angeles is the answer, and the trendiest part of it at that: between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, where much of West Coast's trendiest -- stuff-- is born.

What does this mean? Do shopping malls suddenly "test well" with this pace-setting demographic? Are these areas, suffering from urban flight, desperate for the promise of quick revenue? Both of these are possible, but here is a third theory: suddenly aware of people's desire to move back into urban neighborhoods, mall developers are sprinting to catch up. Now add a growing, ethnic urban middle-class and now there's some real money to be made.

Another urban shopping mall? It is not a hard sell. Suburbanites like their distant lives, but hate their commute. Now, new in town, they pine for the comforts of home, and what piece of their previous existence is more emblematic than the shopping mall? Besides, Los Angeles' legendary love affair with the bland-scape offers little architectural incentive to preserve the past, right? So, 75 year-old permeable, street-front commercial services are closed and plowed under to build the retail equivalent of Biosphere II resplendent with glittering parking structures.

There are some good things I could say about the design of these two specific malls. For example, I could note how they serve as anchors for a vibrant stretch of street life, how they attract people back into the cities, how they are open-air, how they are close to mass transit. But all these belie the fact that shopping malls, like cars, foster point-to-point living. We are not toads that pop out annually during the rainy season. We are human beings who live our lives in continuous, interconnected experiences. That is why the cities we love have continuous, interconnected neighborhoods that flow together.

The saying goes, "be careful what you wish for." We wanted suburbanites to abandon their distant lives and return to the cities. Now they are back and they've brought their shopping malls with them. Not only that, two big boxes, Target and a future Costco, have staked out claims, too. Then there's the nearby Home Depot.

This wonderful little area of Los Angeles is in real danger. It is being slowly transformed into a suburb. L.A. sustainability advocates assumed that high real estate prices would deter this kind of development, but it seems they were wrong. We are watching an allegory unfold before our eyes. Let us learn its lesson early.