The Decline and Fall of the Mall, and more

Serious students of cities, shopping and modern society, which are inextricably related (as are also architecture, design, crowd control and Disneyland) are fascinated by malls. Malls are posited by many as city-killers, at least in suburban areas where small town centers were replaced by malls far from the center, on the less expensive real estate at edge of town. Some of these went by the name Town Centre or something similarly robber-baronish, which adds to the whole postmodern interest. Then malls themselves died, or metamorphosed into collections of Walmart type big boxes. Meanwhile cities as such have their own ups and downs, but we seem to be in a revival of interest in literal city life, that mishmash of activity defended by Jane Jacobs against the brutal singularity of Robert Moses back in the day. (Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities is canonical in this whole area of study.)

Aaron Gilbreath has written a nifty piece in the Paris Review, Pleasure Domes with Parking, that does a nice job of outlining the mall's rise and fall: Malls adorned themselves in gaudy architecture and country-and-western motifs, presented themselves as shopping experiences rather than just places to shop, and capitalized on Americans’ aspirations toward glitz and glamour... The first mall Gruen designed, named Northland Center, included avant garde giraffe sculptures, extensive landscaping, and spinning mobiles. Southdale Center went further. It had a twenty-one-foot birdcage containing fifty colorful birds, tropical plants, costumed Hawaiians serenading crowds, and a huge central square named the “Garden Court of Perpetual Spring.”

One thing I would add, though, in addition to mall's vis-a-vis the cities, is malls vis-a-vis department stores. That's the original, Wanamaker's, on the left. In terms of retailing, that is what malls replaced. At one point, it was the department store that was the capitalist pleasure dome, with everything anyone could want available for a price, and displayed to make you want it at any price. Malls began their lives with the last vestiges of the golden age of department stores as anchors, but this was a mug's game because the entire mall itself became a virtual department store that no single store, however large and complex, could match. Add to this the thought that department stores themselves had been instrumental in establishing town centers in the first place, and it all goes full circle. Small town — big town — mall — big town — small town...