Everything about Shopping Mall totally explained
A
shopping mall or
shopping centre is a building or set of buildings that contain a variety of
retail units, with interconnecting
walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit.
Strip malls have developed since the 1920s, corresponding to the rise of
suburban living in the
United States after
World War II. As such, the strip mall development has been the subject of the same criticisms leveled against
suburbanisation and suburban
sprawl in general. In the
United Kingdom, these are called
retail parks,
out-of-town shopping centres, or
precincts.
Regional differences
In most of the
world the term
shopping centre is used, especially in Europe and Australasia; however
shopping mall is also used, predominantly in
North America, but also to a large extent in Asia.
Shopping precinct and
shopping arcade are also used. In
North America, the term
shopping mall is usually applied to enclosed retail structures (and may be abbreviated to simply
mall) while
shopping centre usually refers to open-air retail complexes.
Malls in Ireland, pronounced "maills", are typically very small shopping centres placed in the centre of town. They average about twenty years in age, with a mix of local shops and chain stores. These malls don't have shops found in the high street or modern shopping centres.
Shopping centres in the United Kingdom can be referred to as "shopping precincts" or just "precincts", but with American-style centres becoming more common in the UK, they're increasingly being referred to as "malls".
History
Isfahan's
Grand Bazaar, which is largely covered, dates from the 10th century A.D. The 10 kilometer long covered
Tehran's Grand Bazaar also has a long history. The
Grand Bazaar of
Istanbul was built in 15th century and is still one of the largest covered markets in the world with more than 58 streets and 4000 shops. The
Oxford Covered Market in
Oxford,
England was officially opened on
1 November 1774 and still runs today.
The
Burlington Arcade in London was opened in 1819.
The Arcade in
Providence, Rhode Island introduced the concept to the
United States in 1828. The
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in
Milan,
Italy followed in the 1860s and is closer to large modern malls in spaciousness. Other large cities created arcades and shopping centres in the late 19th century and early 20th century, including the
Cleveland Arcade and
Moscow's
GUM in 1890. Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square,
Lake Forest, Illinois (1916) and
Country Club Plaza,
Kansas City, Missouri (1924).
An early indoor mall in the United States was the
Lake View Store at
Morgan Park,
Duluth, Minnesota, which was built in 1915 and held its grand opening on
July 20,
1916. The architect was Dean & Dean from Chicago and the building contractor was George H. Lounsberry from Duluth. The building is two-stories with a full basement and shops were originally located on all three levels. All of the stores were located within the interior of the mall with some shops being accessible from both inside and out.
In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the
suburb and
automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping centre was created away from
downtown.
Early shopping centers
An early shopping center in the United States was
Country Club Plaza, which opened in 1924 in
Kansas City, Missouri. Other important shopping centers built in the 1920s and early 1930s are the Highland Park Village in Dallas, Texas; River Oaks in Houston, Texas; and Park and Shop in Washington, DC.
However, the concept of the fully-enclosed shopping mall didn't appear until the 1950s. The idea was pioneered by the
Austrian-born architect and American immigrant
Victor Gruen. This new generation, that were eventually called malls, included
Northgate Mall, built in north
Seattle, Washington,
USA in 1950, Victor Gruen's
Northland Shopping Center built near
Detroit, Michigan,
USA in 1954, and
Gulfgate Mall in Houston were all originally open-air pedestrian shopping centers that later were enclosed as malls. The first enclosed, postwar shopping center (or mall) was the Gruen-designed
Southdale Center, which opened in the
Twin Cities suburb of
Edina, Minnesota,
USA in 1956. As equally important as the enclosed aspect of these new malls was that for the first time in the development of American cities, these malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtown into the new sprawling and largely residential suburbs. This formula--enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile--became a popular way to build retail across the world at different moments. In the
UK,
Chrisp Street Market was the first pedestrian shopping area built with a road at the shop fronts.
The
Bergen Mall, the oldest enclosed mall in New Jersey, opened in
Paramus on
November 14,
1957, with
Dave Garroway, host of
The Today Show, serving as master of ceremonies. The mall, located just miles from
New York City, was first planned in 1955 by
Allied Stores to have 100 stores and 8,600 parking spaces in a 1.5 million ft² mall that would include a 300,000 ft² Stern's store and two other 150,000 ft² department stores as part of the initial design. Allied's chairman B. Earl Puckett confidently announced the Bergen Mall as the largest of ten proposed centers, stating that there were 25 cities that could support such centers and that no more than 50 malls of this type would ever be built nationwide.
The title of the largest enclosed shopping mall remains with the
West Edmonton Mall in
Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada since 1986. West Edmonton Mall is listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records for the "largest shopping centre in the world" and "world's largest parking lot".
One of the world's largest shopping complexes at one location is the two-mall agglomeration of the
Plaza at King of Prussia and the
Court at King of Prussia in the
Philadelphia suburb of
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania,
USA. The King of Prussia mall has the most shopping per square foot in the US. The most visited shopping mall in the world and largest mall in the United States is the
Mall of America, located near the
Twin Cities in
Bloomington, Minnesota,
USA. However, several Asian malls are advertised as having more visitors, including
Mal Taman Anggrek,
Kelapa Gading Mall and Megamal
Pluit, all in
Jakarta-Indonesia,
Berjaya Times Square in Malaysia and
SM Megamall in the Philippines.
Beijing's (Peking)
Golden Resources Mall, opened in October 2004, is the world's second largest mall, at 600,000 m² (approximately 6 million square ft).
Berjaya Times Square in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is advertised at .
SM Mall of Asia in the
Philippines, opened in May 2006, is the world's third largest at of gross floor area. The
Mall of Arabia inside
Dubailand in
Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, which will open in 2008, will become the largest mall in the world, at .
A mall can refer to a shopping mall, which is a place where a collection of
shops all adjoin a pedestrian area, or an exclusively pedestrian street, that allows shoppers to walk without interference from vehicle traffic.
Mall is generally used in
North America and
Australasia to refer to a large shopping area usually composed of a single building which contains multiple shops, usually "anchored" by one or more department stores surrounded by a parking lot, while the term
arcade is more often used, especially in
Britain, to refer to a narrow pedestrian-only street, often covered or between closely spaced buildings (see
town centre). A larger, often only partly covered but exclusively pedestrian shopping area is in Britain also termed a
shopping precinct or
pedestrian precinct. The majority of British shopping centres are in town centres, usually inserted into old shopping districts, and surrounding by subsidiary open air shopping streets. A number of large out-of-town "regional malls" such as
Meadowhall,
Sheffield and the
Trafford Centre,
Manchester were built in the 1980s and 1990s, but there are only ten of them or so and planning regulations prohibit the construction of any more. Out-of-town shopping developments in the UK are now focused on retail parks, which consist of groups of warehouse style shops with individual entrances from outdoors. Planning policy prioritizes the development of existing town centres, although with patchy success. The
Metro centre,
Gateshead, is the largest shopping centre in Europe with over 330 shops, 50 restaurants and an 11 screen cinema
Classes of malls
In many cases, regional and super-regional malls exist as parts of large superstructures which often also include office space, residential space, amusement parks and so forth. This trend can be seen in the construction and design of many modern supermalls such as
Cevahir Mall in
Turkey. The
International Council of Shopping Centers' 1999 definitions were not restricted to shopping centers in any particular country, but later editions were made specific to the U.S. with a separate set for Europe.
Regional malls
A
regional mall is, per the
International Council of Shopping Centers, in the United States, a shopping mall which is designed to service a larger area than a conventional shopping mall. As such, it's typically larger with to
gross leasable area with at least two anchors and offers a wider selection of stores. Given their wider service area, these malls tend to have higher-end stores that need a larger area in order for their services to be profitable. Regional malls are also found as tourist attractions in vacation areas.
Super-regional malls
A
super-regional mall is, per the ICSC, in the U.S. a shopping mall with over
Components
Food court
A shopping mall food court consists of shops stalls offering different cuisines. At a typical food court, meals are ordered at one of the shops then carried to a common dining area, which is normally a plaza contiguous with the counters of the multiple food vendors.
Department stores
When the shopping mall format was developed by
Victor Gruen in the mid-1950s, signing larger department stores was necessary for the financial stability of the projects, and to draw retail traffic that would result in visits to the smaller stores in the mall as well. These larger stores are termed
anchor store or draw tenant. Anchors generally have their rents heavily discounted, and may even receive cash inducements from the mall to remain open. In physical configuration, anchor stores are normally located as far from each other as possible to maximize the amount of traffic from one anchor to another.
Dead malls
In the U.S, as more modern facilities are built, many early malls have become largely abandoned, due to decreased traffic and tenancy. These "dead malls" have failed to attract new business and often sit unused for many years until restored or demolished. Interesting examples of
architecture and
urban design, these structures often attract people who explore and photograph them. This phenomenon of dead and dying malls is examined in detail by the website
Deadmalls.com, which hosts many such photographs, as well as historical accounts. Until the mid-1990s, the trend was to build enclosed malls and to renovate older outdoor malls into enclosed ones. Such malls had advantages such as temperature control. Since then, the trend has turned and it's once again fashionable to build open-air malls. Some enclosed malls have been opened up, such as the
Sherman Oaks Galleria. In addition, some malls, when replacing an empty anchor location, have replaced the former anchor store building with the more modern outdoor design, leaving the remainder of the indoor mall intact, such as the
Del Amo Fashion Center in
Torrance, California.
New trends
In parts of
Canada, it's now rare for new shopping malls to be built, as outdoor
outlet malls or
big box shopping areas known as
power centres are now favored, although the traditional enclosed shopping mall is still in demand by those seeking weather-protected, all-under-one-roof shopping. In addition the enclosed interconnections between downtown multi story shopping malls continue to grow in the
Underground city of
Montreal (32 kilometres of passageway), the
PATH system of
Toronto (27 km of passageway) and the
Plus15 system of
Calgary (16 km of overhead passageway).
Vertical malls
Due to the high land price in densely populated conurbations such as Hong Kong, and the higher yield on retail property, the "vertical mall" is common -
Times Square is considered the first of its kind. The concept of the vertical mall departs from the common western model of the flat shopping mall: space allocated to retail is configured over a number of storeys accessible by escalators linking the different levels of the mall. The challenge of this type of mall is to overcome the natural tendency of shoppers to move horizontally and encourage shoppers to move upwards and downwards
In response, a few jurisdictions, notably
California, have expanded the right of
freedom of speech to ensure that speakers will be able to reach consumers who prefer to shop, eat, and socialize within the boundaries of privately owned malls. See
Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins.
Further Information
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