{"id":3316,"date":"2010-08-04T22:43:29","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T05:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=3316"},"modified":"2010-08-04T22:43:29","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T05:43:29","slug":"a-glance-across-the-threshold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/08\/04\/a-glance-across-the-threshold\/","title":{"rendered":"A glance across the threshold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while back, I read A. Alfred Taubman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Threshold-Resistance-Extraordinary-Retailing-Pioneer\/dp\/0061235377\/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1\">Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer<\/a>. As I noted on my <a href=\"http:\/\/ca.linkedin.com\/in\/yuleheibel\">LinkedIn Reading List Update<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 2px solid white\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/519q-xy88kL._SL500_SS225_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"158\" height=\"158\" \/>An unusual book by an unusual individual: A. Alfred Taubman is a real estate developer (who has been accused of &#8220;malling&#8221; America); an art collector; former part-owner of Sotheby&#8217;s; a family guy; philanthropist; major booster of Detroit (Detroit!); &#8230;the list goes on. At times I wondered whether I&#8217;d like Taubman if I met him; other times I was sure I would. He writes like an Everyman &#8211; he is, however, anything but an Everyman. It makes for an interesting tension in reading the book: Taubman makes you understand his world (sort of), even if its self-made-man tycoon-ishness remains outside your grasp. There&#8217;s a lot to learn here, about how developers think, what makes them tick, and why-and-how urban and suburban development issues are definitely two-edged swords.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What that means &#8211; in a nutshell &#8211; is that I learned a lot from reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thresholdresistance.com\/\">Threshold Resistance<\/a> and recommend it.<\/p>\n<p>Today I had to look up the book online and thus came across Alfred Taubman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thresholdresistance.com\/\">site<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thresholdresistance.com\/blog\/\">blog<\/a>. Tremendous energy &#8211; he doesn&#8217;t stop. For example, this fall he&#8217;s teaching a course at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ltu.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lawrence Technological University<\/a> on architecture and real estate (ARC 5732, &#8220;Land Economics\/The Architecture of Development&#8221;). His <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thresholdresistance.com\/blog\/?p=171\">post<\/a> lists the guest talent he lined up: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rvapc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rafael Vinoly<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kpf.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Eugene Kohn<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelgraves.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Graves<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.time.com\/time\/magazine\/article\/0,9171,911883,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kenneth Walker<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Agree or disagree, it&#8217;s hard not to be awed by Taubman&#8217;s energy and drive. And whatever position you take regarding development &#8211; urban, suburban &#8211; you need to understand how key individuals who are unique and visionary (even if you don&#8217;t agree with their vision) approach the matter.<\/p>\n<p>If ARC 5732 were available online, I&#8217;d audit it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A while back, I read A. Alfred Taubman&#8217;s Threshold Resistance: The Extraordinary Career of a Luxury Retailing Pioneer. As I noted on my LinkedIn Reading List Update, An unusual book by an unusual individual: A. Alfred Taubman is a real estate developer (who has been accused of &#8220;malling&#8221; America); an art collector; former part-owner of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1061,2233,2164],"tags":[910,20123],"class_list":["post-3316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-land_use","category-real_estate","tag-development","tag-taubman"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3316"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3325,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions\/3325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}