Three new shopping centers — with an old Main Street look — are set to open in the Midstate beginning this fall.

These high-end outdoor malls come complete with fountains, roundabouts, promenades and design details that give them a similar feel to downtown Franklin and Nashville's Hillsboro Village.

Hill Center at Green Hills is set to open for shoppers in September, with Indian Lake Village in Hendersonville and McEwen in Williamson County to follow.

These lifestyle centers — the first for the region — are envisioned as the antithesis of the car-centered strip center and the answer to the park-and-go-inside mall. They're a throwback to pre-automobile days.

"Within a walk from where you lived, you could sustain yourself," said Benjamin Cren shaw, a landscape architect with Southern Land
Co., which is developing Mc Ewen.

Lifestyle centers are designed foremost for pedestrians and include stores and homes, though they sometimes include office space.

To urban planners who embrace the idea, they're the latest big thing for cities like Nashville.

"I think we're behind a lot of other cities — we're ahead of some," said Metro Planning Director Rick Bernhardt. "But I think we generally are behind."

In Nashville's urban markets, it pays to pack shops and homes tightly together, said Jimmy Granbery, chief executive officer of H.G. Hill Realty Co. It's more bang for the buck and more efficient use of limited space, he said.

"It would be almost criminal to take a piece of property like ours in Green Hills and have 50,000 to 60,000 square feet of (developed) space on it and six acres of asphalt parking lot," Granbery said.