[2] He is also noted for his urban revitalization proposals, described in his writings and applied in master plans such as for Fort Worth, Texas (1955),[3] Kalamazoo, Michigan (1958) and Fresno, California (1965).

The mall was commercially successful, but the original design was never fully realized, as the intended apartment buildings, schools, medical facilities, park and lake were not built.

Because he invented the modern mall, Malcolm Gladwell, writing in The New Yorker, suggested that "Victor Gruen may well have been the most influential architect of the twentieth century.

[13] Gruen was the principal architect for a luxury housing development built on the 48-acre (190,000 m2) site of Boston, Massachusetts' former West End neighborhood.

This development, known as Charles River Park is regarded by many as a dramatically ruthless re-imagining of a former immigrant tenement neighborhood[14] (Gans, O'Conner, The Hub).

In 1968, he returned to Vienna,[4] where he engaged in the gradual transformation of the inner city into a pedestrian zone, of which only some parts have been implemented, including Kärntner Straße and Graben.

[19] In 1963, on his 21st birthday, his son New York attorney Michael S. Gruen (then a Harvard undergraduate) was given a painting "Schloss Kammer am Attersee II" by Gustav Klimt.

[20] While ownership of the painting was given to his son in 1963, the elder Gruen maintained a life estate on the chattel and continued to hang it in his living room and even paid for insurance and repairs.