A shopping mall is also hailed as a shopping center, shopping arcade or simply mall. This building or set of buildings comprise of stores for shopping. The interconnecting walkways facilitate the visitor’s stroll from one store to another. Isfahan’s Grand Bazaar, the indoor multi vendor place for shopping was erected in the 10th century A.D. On 1st November 1774, the Oxford Covered Market was opened in England. By the next century, similar shopping arcades were introduced in London and in the United States. The Arcade in Providence of Rhode Island was a pioneer in this case. The Galleria Vittorio Emmanuelle II in Milan, inaugurated in the 1860s, is almost identical to gigantic modern malls in terms of capaciousness. By the end of the 19th century and beginning of 20th century, most of the large cities boasted of arcades and shopping malls. With the advent of suburb and automobile culture in the USA, new-fangled styles of shopping malls were created away from city centers. Northgate Mall of north Seattle, Washington, established in 1950 led the way for these new generation shopping malls. The very large shopping malls are referred as mega malls.
The two-mall agglomeration of the Plaza at King of Prussia and the Court at King of Prussia in the Philadelphia suburb of the King of Prussia is the biggest shopping complex in the world whereas the mall of America in Minnesota is the most visited shopping mall in the world. Among the largest shopping malls, the Golden Resources Shopping Mall of Beijing and Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur are worth a mention. The regional shopping malls are designed to provide service to a large outlying area and all consist of a wide variety of stores. In popular tourist spots, these regional shopping malls often attract hordes of tourists. Shopping centers with over 1 million square feet of retail space are known as Super-regional malls. The strip mall or plaza characterizes stores in a row with a sidewalk in front. They also comprise of space for parking vehicles. Two sizes of strip malls can be observed in the US and Canada.
Grocery stores, video rental stores, small restaurants, dry cleaning stores and even gas stations are part of these strip shopping malls. The strip malls that attract the residents of an entire population area are called power centers. These consist of electronics stores, bookstores and home improvement stores. The Roland Park Shopping Center in Baltimore in Maryland was the first shopping center or strip mall in the United States. The roomy parking garages, well-maintained walkways and private security guards have helped the shopping malls to dislocate the conventional main streets. Victor Gruen is considered as the father of modern shopping malls. |
