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Architects Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson explain how existing suburbs can be redesigned and redeveloped in their book Retrofitting Suburbia.

In Denver, Colorado, a group of urban planners and architects gather this week to debate urban design. How can suburbia and downtown get closer? Joining The Takeaway from Denver is Ellen Dunham, the Director of the Architecture program at Georgia Institute of Technology and the co-author of "Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs".

This weekend, 1,100 auto-dealership owners across the country took in the sobering news that their contracts with GM will disappear in the auto maker's reorganization. A huge blow to the dealers who will be losing their livelihoods, the closings also raise the question of what to do with all the shuttered car dealerships. Most cities have at least one strip of town dedicated to car-dealer row. So what will happen when the dealers close up shop? For a few ideas we turn to Ellen Durham-Jones, Director of the Architecture Program at Georgia Tech and co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.

It may not be that easy to find a mall to go hang out and shop anymore. General Growth Properties, one of the biggest mall operators in the country, filed for bankruptcy yesterday. And we are seeing more and more malls die out. In fact as our next guest wrote in The New York Times earlier this month, no new malls have been built in the U.S. since 2006. So what is happening to the mall? And what should happen to the near empty malls now littering the American landscape? To help answer that question, The Takeaway is joined by Ellen Dunham-Jones, Director of the Architecture Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.

Read the New York Times article, 101 Uses for a Deserted Mall, including a contribution from our guest Ellen Dunham-Jones.

How I Met Your Mother's Robin Sparkles knows how to love a mall:

Architects Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson explain how existing suburbs can be redesigned and redeveloped in their book Retrofitting Suburbia.