Utopia Lost? the Significance of the Shopping Mall in American Culture and The

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effects of its decline on the American public

Lisa Scharoun, University of Canberra

Abstract

For the last 50 years, the ubiquitous shopping mall has been a staple of everyday

American life. Victor Gruen, credited with creating the blueprint for the contemporary shopping mall, envisioned the mall as ‘the nucleus of a utopian experiment’, a space where ‘shoppers will be so bedazzled by a store’s surroundings that they will be drawn – unconsciously, continually to shop in a master- planned, mixed-use community’. According to Ellen Dunham-Jones, ‘20 percent of the 2,000 largest malls in the United States are failing’. As a result of oversaturation, the current economic situation and changing shopping habits, many of Gruen’s ‘utopian experiments’ are being replaced with ‘Big Box’ stores such as

Target and Walmart, spaces that offer none of the communal aspects of Gruen’s retail vision. Although the decline of the American shopping mall may be seen as a triumph to many, one cannot discredit the cultural importance of the shopping mall and the imprint that it has left on the average American consumer. This article explores the shopping mall as a symbolic construct and reflects on how its decline is affecting the American public.

Keywords

1 public space

shopping malls

community

visual communications

utopia

retail and commerce

From ancient civilization to modern times the realm of commerce, whether it be bazaars,

market squares or formal shopping arcades, has offered the most concentrated expression

of informal public life (Maitland 1985). ‘Perhaps more than any other single place in the

city, it [the shopping centre] has been instrumental in creating novel and ingenious hardware for the definition, protection and enclosure of public space’, says Maitland

(1985: 1). For the last 50 years, the ubiquitous shopping mall has come to define the cultural and visual fabric of postmodern American life. Now, as a result of oversaturation, change in shopping habits and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the existence of the regional shopping mall has come under threat.

This article will discuss the history of the enclosed shopping mall and its role in constructing post-war American shopping habits. It will also address the benefits of the mall as a public space along with problems inherent in this space. Finally, through a discussion on the narrative of identity and public space, the author attempts to form an understanding of how the loss of the regional shopping mall will affect American public space.

2 The history of the American shopping mall

‘The goal of the city is to make man happy and safe’ – Aristotle

The framework for the modern American shopping mall grew out of the post-Second

World War era. Post-Second World War American cities had become crowded and

difficult to navigate; middle- and working-class families lived in cramped duplexes or

apartment complexes. ‘Americans were ready for a new vision of how to live, work and

play; in essence, they were ready for a new version of the American Dream’, explains

Leinburger (2008: 15). The new drivable and suburban version of the American Dream was facilitated by many connecting factors. During the First World War, domestic car and housing production had been sidelined in favour of production for the war effort

(Leinburger 2008: 15). This, followed by the Depression and subsequent entry into the

Second World War, meant that there was a significant shortage of housing post-Second

World War. The baby boom exasperated the situation, causing the government to re-think land use and zoning laws. Housing loan programmes of the period, sponsored by the

Veterans Administration (VA) and Federal Housing Administration (FHA), favoured newly constructed homes in the suburbs. Communities like Levittown on Long Island led the way by re-purposing farmland with thousands of cookie cutter single-family homes organized in concentric circles (Jackson 1985: 232).

As more and more people migrated to the suburbs the necessity to create auto-friendly and accessible shopping centres grew. ‘Neighborhood serving retail was the first to follow housing out to the suburbs beginning in the 1950s and accelerated in the 1960s’

3 (Leinburger 2008: 35). A new super-highway system linked cities to suburbia and

transformed American life in every facet. The necessity for the automobile in suburbia

created the need for new models of shopping that would accommodate parking. The obvious choice for American consumer space in suburbia was the small-town America

‘Main Street’ model, where individual shops were positioned facing a major thoroughfare, with central or side street parking. Suburban developments, however, utilized curvilinear streets that prevented mass amounts of traffic and therefore diverted the majority of traffic to the newly created peripheral highways. This meant that vast tracts of land along the highways, which was not ideal for housing, could be developed as accessible commercial spaces (Jackson 1985: 231). The original suburban shopping centre designs that grew out of the post-war period were linked pavillion buildings organized in a linear format fronted by parallel or angled spaces for parking, the ‘strip mall’ format. Leinburger says that:

The growing need for almost everyone to drive to neighborhood-serving retail caused

architects to push the stores to the extreme back of the property, allowing all of the

parking spaces to be in the front of the stores; the classic drivable sub-urban commercial

development pattern was born. (2008: 34)

These centres were mainly purpose built for grocery shopping and tended to be more of

an ‘in-and-out’ type experience.

As further development along the highways emerged, suburbia began to rely increasingly

4 less on the downtown areas of the city for specialty goods and services. The suburban

‘strip malls’ offered essential goods and services; however, they offered little possibility for public space to linger and provide entertainment beyond consuming. The deficiency of the ‘strip mall’ format to provide adequate civic space opened the door for a new shopping model to evolve. Developers and planners recognized that there was a need for a new and revolutionary shopping centre model, which would provide a confluence of consumption and public space. Victor Gruen, one of many architects who escaped war- torn Europe for America in the 1930s, recognized the need for a new car-accessible, suburban shopping centre model that would replace the congested downtown areas of cities. Based on the expansive shopping arcades in his native Vienna, Gruen envisioned a fully enclosed shopping centre that would be the ‘heart and brain’ of the city and its surrounding region (Wall 2005: 12). Gruen’s shopping centre would be ‘the nucleus of a utopian experiment’ a space where ‘shoppers will be so bedazzled by a store’s surroundings that they will be drawn – unconsciously, continually – to shop in a master- planned, mixed-use community’ (in Dery 2009). Gruen imagined a retail environment that would encourage the consumer to linger longer, thus extending the possibilities of socialization, community and consumption.

The modern consumer space, as explained by Gruen, should be something more than just a ‘collection of stores’ (Wall 2005: 57). He positioned the shopping mall as an enclosed city, based on the landscape of European cities, in which consumers could leisurely stroll without the distraction of dodging traffic. Gruen’s shopping centre linked the design concepts of the initial strip mall format with the central corridor arcades of Europe,

5 creating a hybrid that combined the drivable convenience necessary in suburbia with a

walkable interior atmosphere. Gruen’s design also combined something seemingly

improbable, the use of two or three competing department stores in one shopping centre.

Organized in a cruciform pattern, the proposed navigation pattern for the mall

encouraged the consumer to enter one of the department or ‘magnet’ stores by placing the

largest entrances into these areas from the expansive parking lot surrounding the mall.

The natural flow would then be to pass by secondary stores, which would be concentrated

around the central core of the space (Wall 2005: 9). This layout encouraged the shopper

to continue moving into another magnet store, which was bookended on the other side of

the mall. The use of the central core, or ‘atrium’ space, was an effective means to break

up the space so that the department store on the other side seemed to be a new destination rather than a repeat of the initial entry point.

First implemented in the design of suburban Minneapolis’ Southdale shopping centre,

Gruen’s enclosed shopping mall model was so successful that it became the standard for

retail construction in America for the next 50 years. ‘Southdale is not a copy of

downtown. Rather, it is an imaginative distillation of what makes downtowns, magnetic,

the variety, the individuality, the lights, the color, even the crowds’, raved a writer for the

Architectural Forum (in Wall 2005: 99). At the time, like everything else in the newly

developed suburbia, it was regarded as an ideal community space, superior to the

declining, congested traditional downtown and ‘Main Street’ areas in the old town

centres.

6 In contrast to the small-town America ‘Main Street’ model and the ‘strip mall’, the

modern shopping mall was an introverted space. Gruen’s designs called for expansive,

windowless cement exteriors, punctuated by ‘big blocks of color and inviting entrance

arcades’ (Wall 2005: 101). The stark concrete walls were surrounded on all sides by

seemingly endless parking lots, creating what Crawford (in Sorkin 1992: 21) calls

‘pedestrian islands in an asphalt sea’. ‘Like the suburban house, which rejected the

sociability of front porches and sidewalks for private backyards, the malls looked inward,

turning their back on the public street’ (Crawford in Sorkin 1992: 21). The largely

undecorated exterior facade of the shopping mall made no attempt to blend in with the

natural space around and appeared as a hulking behemoth in contrast to the planned

living spaces around it.

From a traditional urban point of view, the bland elevations were practically

mute, in starkest contract to his urban shops, they offered nothing to the

sidewalks and parking areas. In the most extreme sense his indoor shopping

centres perfected the collapse between private shop and public street… with

his enclosed shopping centre he brought the entire street into the building-at

the expense of the true public ‘streetscape’ outside the structure. (Wall 2005:

101)

The introverted space of the mall, disconnected from the environment around it, was in and of itself a veritable fantasy-land of consumer indulgences. An extreme contrast of

exterior and interior space was one of Gruen’s major successes as it created an effective

7 navigation pattern from the parking lot to the entry arcade. The muteness of the exterior

also heightened the sense of fantasy as it drew the visitor in and made the often

paradoxical visual signifiers in the space seem believable. Inside the windowless box,

Gruen was able to create an idealized and climate-controlled American ‘Main Street’,

complete with old-fashioned streetlights, striped awnings and colonial-style shop fronts.

In addition to the visual signifiers of America’s ‘Main Street’, tropical gardens mingled

with European-style town clocks and contemporary water features. ‘The malls blended

the bland exteriors of International Style’s lowest common denominators with interior

environments rife with the clash of color and kitsch’, explains Kowinski (1985: 273).

Mall developers would later deem the open surrender of reality for the faux comfort of

the introverted shopping mall as ‘The Retail Drama’ (Kowinski 1985: 274).

The success of Southdale was a catalyst for change as it promoted rapid development of

shopping centres across America. Subsequently, this rapid development led to the decline

of many inner cities throughout the country (Wall 2005: 103). The late 1950s and early

1960s marked a distinct movement of retail outlets from urban to suburban areas.

Developers realized that they could play a huge role in constructing and controlling the

new enclosed shopping mall as the entire space could be run as a single entity. This in

turn made the role of the developer and mortgage banker in the mall planning process

increasingly more important than the architect. The developer and mortgage banker union generated a more clearly focused initiative on designing a space that catered solely to the consumer; thus, Gruen’s utopian vision of a shopping centre that would provide community and cultural activities was diminished. Developers began stripping excess

8 landscaping and sculpture from the spaces to save money and to produce a more purely commercial space. Due to the increased pressure of mall architects to play to the commercial desires of the developers, the shopping malls of the late 1960s and early

1970s became a model that could be replicated with ease with little concern for the conditions or concerns of the environment around it (Leinburger 2008: 34–26). As a result of this developer-led trend, mall development became increasingly formulaic and lost semblance of the ideal community space that Gruen had envisioned. In 1967, fed up with developer control and the abandonment of many of the community aspects of his

‘utopian experiment’, Gruen denounced the shopping mall, retired from his company

Gruen & Associates and returned to Vienna. ‘I refused to pay alimony for those bastard developments’, explained Gruen bitterly in an article in the Los Angeles Times ten years later (in Wall 2005: 110).

By the early 1980s many downtown areas and traditional ‘Main Streets’ had become shadows of their once vibrant past as shops were re-purposed into offices or left in a state of urban decay (Leinburger 2008: 25). A monolithic concrete structure swimming in a moat of tarmac, the mall multiplied across the country like a cancer, replicating multiple times in suburbia throughout America. Kowinski observed, in 1985, that ‘there are more enclosed malls than cities, four-year colleges, or television stations … there are more shopping centres than school districts, hotels or hospitals’ (1985: 21). As the traditional town centre, once home of cultural and civic activities and consumer activities died, the mall became the de facto town centre. Shopping became the major cultural activity for

American families. ‘If you really want to observe entire middle-class multigenerational

9 families, you have to go to the mall’, says Underhill (2004: 9). For teenagers of the 1980s

and early 1990s, who had likely never seen or experienced a traditional ‘Main Street’ or

downtown, the mall was the only public space they had ever known (Kowinski 1985: 21).

The 1990s was the decade of the shopping mall as it featured heavily in films positioned

to the teenage market. Films such as Kevin Smith’s 1995 cult film Mallrats and Amy

Heckerling’s 1995 Clueless reflect a culture and attitude that many suburban adolescents

of this period strongly relate to. Both films position the mall as a form of solace,

community and identity. ‘There’s a whole generation who got their first taste of

independence at the mall. For these guys, the connotations of the mall are mostly positive; for them the mall is real’, explains Underhill (2004: 132).

The ‘Main Streets’ and downtown areas that the mall replaced were places where society could interact with local community and exercise their first amendment rights; however,

the enclosed privatized shopping mall did not offer the same freedoms. As malls grew

from small community centres servicing a ten-mile radius to regional centres servicing a

30-mile radius and finally super-regional centres servicing a radius of 100 miles or more,

true community interaction became strained (ULI 1985: 4). ‘Today, unlike Main Street

[of pre-mall America] the shopping mall is populated by strangers’, explains Oldenburg

(1989: 119). Positioning the mall as an enclosed, privatized space meant that mall

developers and managers could control all activities occurring within this space.

Although the mall has become the de facto ‘town square’ it does not function in the same

way as a traditional ‘Main Street’ or downtown. ‘Unlike the old town squares, which

were and still are sites for community discussion, the only type of speech that is welcome

10 here is marking and other consumer patter’ says Klein (2000: 183). Developers were the major force in designing the shopping centre as a controlled environment. ‘Far from identifying and serving the needs of an existing community, developers knew that people would flock to the giant shopping centre, whether it had social and cultural facilities or not, and no matter what the distance to existing communities’ (Wall 2005: 110).

When malls reached saturation point in the 1970s, developers began to specialize their regional malls. ‘[Saturation] led to a multiplication and diversification of retailing and mall types into a broader range of more specialized and flexible forms, which allowed for a more precise match between goods and consumers’, says Crawford (in Robbins and

Smiley 2002: 26). The regional mall was segmented into up-market and mid-market models. ‘Fashion malls’ defined the up-market segment and included an upper-end

department store or a high-end limited department store as an anchor tenant (ULI 1985:

14). More popular with developers were ‘Mid-market malls’, malls with mid-range

anchors such as JC Penny and Sears, which appealed to the middle market. ‘In the 1970s, the mid-markets were defined as the growth opportunities for regional centers’, notes the

Urban Land Institute (1985: 14). Super regional malls for the up-market shopper evolved

in the late 1970s. The super regional mall offered the same retail options as a ‘fashion

mall’ but had a more concentrated focus on the entertainment aspect of shopping. The

super regional malls incorporated theme park-type attractions, theatres and themed

eateries to draw customers from as far as 100 miles away (ULI 1985: 14). From the

1990s onward this system of up-market and mid-market stratification of regional malls proved to be a reliable model for producing retail profit. By the year 2000, malls were an

11 integral part of the American landscape and a retail environment that seemed destined to continue far into the future. ‘In 2003, the malls in the US had a turnover of 240 billion dollars, in 2002, consumer spending in malls accounted for around seventy per cent of the gross national product, equaling in amount greater than what most other industrialized nations spend’ (Herwig and Holzherr 2006: 133).

In first few years of the 2000s the enclosed shopping mall system seemed like a model that was destined to succeed indefinitely; however, as early as 2006 several prominent shopping centre development groups began to lose their grip on the market. In April of

2009 one of the largest mall management and development groups in the United States,

General Growth Properties (GGP), declared bankruptcy. With a total of 27.3 billion US dollars of debt, the GGP case has been declared the largest real estate bankruptcy case in

US history and signals a decline of the enclosed shopping centre model (Taub and Louis

2009). One cannot claim that the mall is ‘dead’ just yet as viable super regional malls still exist across the country; however, this article argues that there is a growing development trend away from enclosed shopping centres, specifically regional shopping malls. The next section will explore this growing trend and the possible effects it will have on

American public space.

The death of the regional mall

‘The word consumption used to be a pejorative, meaning death, destruction and waste, now more and more people are aware of that’ – Stuart Ewen (in Dokoupil 2008).

12 According to Ellen Dunham-Jones ‘20 percent of the 2,000 largest malls in the United

States are failing’ (in Rendell 2009). The International Council of Shopping Centres

quantify that only a third of a total 1100 enclosed regional shopping malls in the United

States are currently viable (Stabiner 2011). Mall construction in the United States has nearly ground to a halt, with only one enclosed shopping centre opened since 2006. The decline has been attributed a change in attitude towards consumption and the 2008 Global

Financial Crisis. ‘The severity of the recession is turning some malls that were once viewed as viable into potential causalities’, says Hudson and O’Connell (2009). Rendell explains: ‘A driving force in the decline of the American shopping mall as we know it is a realization that the model is not sustainable, either economically or environmentally’

(2009). The Economist Online believes that the model is on the decline due to a distinct change in the nature of the suburbs.

Although Gruen could not bear to admit it, his invention appealed to those

who wanted downtown’s shops without its purported dangers. These days, in

Minneapolis and in much of America, the ethnic drift is in the opposite

direction. The suburbs are becoming much more racially mixed while the

cities fill up with hip, affluent whites. As a result, suburban malls no longer

provide a refuge from diversity. (Anon 2007)

One of the largest factors in the decline of the enclosed shopping mall has been the rise of

‘Big Box’ retailers such as Target and Walmart, retail centres that have re-invigorated the

strip mall style of ‘one stop shopping’ for time poor and pocket-conscious mid-market

consumers. ‘Developers have been moving away from the enclosed-mall format in favor

13 of big box centres anchored by free-standing giants such as Wal-mart’ (Hudson and

O’Connell 2009). In a new age of austerity ‘Big Box’ retailers offer consumers bulk

savings and a sense of satisfaction in their thrifty retail choices. ‘[“Big Box” stores] don’t

just sell products; they sell trophies, when you come home with a huge supply of toilet

paper, and the man enters the house with them, he is truly the conquering hero’ (Zepp

1997: 159). These ‘Big Boxes’ are becoming ever more prevalent in suburbia, replacing

many viable regional malls or turning them into dead spaces.

In a November 2010 observation of retail development in New York State and

Massachusetts, the author found that the dominant trend in regional areas was a re-

development of many former malls into ‘Big Box’ or ‘Hybrid’ centres. Over a period of

one month, the author travelled to 30 malls: 26 regional mall and four super regional

malls. All four super regional malls in the sample exhibited high occupancy (70 to 80 per

cent). In the sample of 26 regional malls, four malls exhibited high occupancy (70 to 80

per cent), fourteen malls exhibited low occupancy (less than 40 per cent) and four of the

malls were completely vacant. In the remainder of the sample, one mall had been re-

furbished as a medical centre, another as a ‘lifestyle centre’, with the two final malls in the sample replaced by ‘Big Box’ centres. Of the fourteen regional malls that displayed low occupancy, ‘Big Box’ centres were located in close proximity (within a ten- to twenty-mile radius). Three of the four regional malls in the sample, which exhibited high occupancy, had been converted into ‘Hybrids’. ‘Hybrids’ attach ‘Big Box’ stores, such as

Target and Best Buy, to the mall. In the ‘Hybrid’ model, the ‘Big Boxes’ have their own external entry, which allows for customers to gain quick entry and exit from the parking

14 lot. The one-month observation provides evidence of the dominance of the ‘Big Box’ model.

The author interviewed Pyramid Companies Marketing Director Andra Case on 15

November 2010 to gain an overall impression of Pyramid’s take on the decline of the enclosed shopping mall. The Pyramid Companies is a large retail development company

in the north-east with a portfolio of shopping malls in both New York and Massachusetts.

‘In order to keep many of the regional malls viable’, explains Case, ‘Pyramid have

attempted to move the ‘Big Box’ to the mall as many of our malls have an attached a

Target creating a hybrid between the two’ (2010). Case noted that although Target is

more of a ‘one-stop shop’ she does not believe that the nature of a Target takes anything

away from the communal aspects of the shopping mall experience. In these malls, Target

has their own entrance and functions in the way traditional department stores such as

Macy’s once did. Target, however, is a discount version of the traditional mid-market

magnet stores, with shopping trolleys and shop fittings that evoke a supermarket rather

than a department store. Although Pyramid believes this is the solution, it could

ultimately lead to the death of the interior mall space. Visitors may frequent only the

attached ‘Big Boxes’, which provide the bulk and range of goods found at multiple mall

stores, and fail to flow into the mall space. Architect Richard Reep supports this theory

and believes that the hybrid as a solution to save the shopping mall has failed. He says

that instead of using the enclosed mall space as it was intended, to use as communal

space and also as a flow through to the magnet stores, ‘shoppers parked at the main mall,

shopped and then parked in front of the various strips, shopping their way out of the

15 parking lot’ (Reep 2008). Reep goes on to explain that ‘This [hybrid] model could not rescue malls, so developers starting reinventing them as lifestyle centres’ (Reep 2008).

Introduced in the early 2000s, the ‘lifestyle centre’ is a twist on Gruen’s retail vision. A

‘lifestyle centre’ is essentially the enclosed mall with the roof removed. The difference, explains The Economist Online, is that ‘the plants are real and rather than vaguely evoking a town centre, it is actually done up to look like one… it performs all the functions of a mall without looking at all like one’ (Anon 2007). Many ‘lifestyle centres’ incorporate urban grid patterns, creating small laneways with cobble-stone streets dotted with outdoor street lamps, in an attempt to recreate the feel of the ‘Main Street’ of pre- suburban America that the mall destroyed. These ‘prelapsarian downtowns where there is no crime or homelessness are only possible because Americans have largely forgotten what downtowns used to be like’ (Anon 2007). Many failing malls are ripping off their roofs in an attempt to re-invigorate their dying enclosed core with a plein-air recreation of ‘Main Street’; however, some real-estate investors doubt that this model will become the dominant trend. Miller, an investor with Transwestern, explains: ‘One sign that developers aren’t confident in the model is that more are trying to leave room for “Big

Box” stores’ (in Reep 2008). Miller’s comments provide evidence of the dominance of the ‘Big Box’ model in re-shaping the suburban retail environment.

Research presented in this article exhibits a growing trend towards the ‘Big Box’ model for regional retail development. A decline of the regional mall will lead to a loss of public space in many regional areas across the United States. ‘Big Box’ stores, while offering

16 opportunities for bargain and bulk shopping, do not provide the consumer with public space. Zepp compares the difference between a ‘Big Box’ store and a shopping mall:

The appeal [of the big box store] is a lesser amount of money spent in a limited amount of time with a Zen-like concentration on the business at had. There is no fun here and no specially programmed Muzak. All space is used for merchandise, with the exception of the necessary room for offices. (1997: 159)

The appeal of super regional malls remains strong, as this model offers more entertainment options than the traditional regional mall and draws from a larger catchment area (over 100 miles). Although many super-regional malls remain viable, the

100-mile catchment radius makes it largely inaccessible as a public space to many suburbanites. ‘In suburbia and small towns, malls often are the only major public spaces and the safest venues for teenagers to shop, hang out and seek part-time work’, explain

Hudson and O’Connell (2009). The loss of regional malls can be potentially devastating for groups in regional areas that depend on their existence.

Although many regional ‘dead mall’ spaces have been re-purposed as ‘Big Box’ stores, many more have been left empty, exerting a further stress on the already compromised

environment. ‘During past economic cycles, dead malls were frequently redeveloped into

mixed-use space that includes apartments, office or parks [as a result of declining

property values] repurposing mall space today will be more difficult’, notes Hudson and

O’Connell (2009). The hulking empty expanses of concrete and tarmac have become a

17 potentially dangerous blight on the surrounding neighbourhood. ‘The mall’s site can rapidly turn into a wasteland of overgrown weeds, cracked concrete, and stray animals, with looters picking sites clean of copper tubing, light fixtures and anything else that can be sold for scrap’, says Mok (2009). As the shops that support teen employment close, the mall can also become a magnet for crime in an increasingly depressed area. The next section will explore the potential impact that the loss of this space will have on the

American public.

The mall and the American psyche

‘Malls as dream like fantasies are places of unabashed contradictions of time, place and subjectivity that exists as much in imagination as reality’ – Langham (in Gottdiener 1995:

95).

The mall is not simply a consumer space; it is also a diversion from reality, which offers a fantasy world of consumption to distract the visitor from the more depressing realities of life. ‘Regardless of the negative judgments made against them, malls are indisputably an alternative to the ennui and isolation found in urban and suburban America’, notes

Zepp (1997: 66). Gottdiener agrees: ‘People come to the mall because they are driven both by consumerist fantasies and in order to seek a common ground for sociability in a society with limited opportunities for public interaction’ (1995: 97). With the death of the

American ‘Main Street’ and downtown areas firmly in place by the late 1980s, the mall became one of the few spaces for people to interact. ‘Malls are American’s public spaces-

the town halls of twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ (Farrell 2003: xiii). The mall space

18 specifically appeals to adolescents and older people. This section will discuss the

importance of the enclosed shopping mall as a social space for these groups.

‘The mall is perceived as a serene, crime-free zone’, says Zepp (1997: 29). Because of

this, parents feel safe leaving their children at the mall and subsequently the mall became

a cultural space particularly suited to teenagers. ‘Kids spend so much time at a mall partly

because their parents allow it and even encourage it. The mall is safe, it doesn’t seem to

harbor any unsavory activities’ (Kowinski 1985: 351). In many time-poor families, the

mall acts as a ‘baby-sitter’ for their children. As a result, American teenagers’ sense of self and identity is highly influenced by the visual and cultural signifiers present in the mall environment. ‘The primary hang-out and shopping place for kids once they gain their independence is the shopping mall… for teenagers (12–15) and young teens (8–12), the mall is an oasis of freedom in a world of apparent restrictions’ (Farrell 2003: 102). At the height of mall culture, in the 1980s, groups of individuals began labelling themselves

‘mall rats’. The term ‘mall rat’ has entered the contemporary vernacular and is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘a young person who goes to shopping malls (= large covered shopping areas) to spend time with their friends’. Many suburban adolescent

American youth of this period strongly relate their childhood to the mall.

There’s a whole generation who got their first wild taste of independence at

the mall. It’s where they were dropped off on Friday nights by Mom and

permitted to run free-to shop, blow their allowance, and socialize themselves

into adulthood. For these guys, the connotations of the mall are mostly

positive. For them, the mall is real. (Underhill 2004: 132)

19 On Penn Can Mall self-described ‘mall rats’ reminisce with photos and stories from their

teenage years spent in the public space of the mall. On an excerpt from the site, one such

‘mall rat’ writes:

For myself and many kids who grew up in the Cicero and North Syracuse areas [in

Central New York] Penn Can Mall was the coolest place to hang out in the 80s. When

someone asked if you wanted to hang out after school, it was a given that they were

talking about The Mall. (Hepp 2002)

The mall not only offers a place for socialization for this demographic but also a location

in which they can explore their own identity and community. Through the mannequins in

shop windows and the pedestrians walking the mall corridors, visions of how to act, dress

and think are all presented to the receptive teenage brain. ‘The mall is an important place

for American adolescents to work out their identity and community… the mall allows

teens to play with their attractiveness and sexuality’ (Farrell 2003: 103).

For the elderly, the mall represents a safe and inviting social space, where they might sit

and feel part of society. The phenomenon of ‘mall walking’ among groups of elderly people emerged as a way to exercise in a climate-controlled space. The mall also

functioned as an environment in which the elderly could reasonably blend in and spend time in the perceived safety of the mall. ‘Mall walking’, or ambling around a shopping centre for exercise, has become a major fitness option in the United States’ (Internicola

2010). ‘Mall walking’ was conceived as early as 1956 at Gruen’s first enclosed shopping

20 centre, Southdale, on the outskirts of Minneapolis. As the icy winter climate made it

difficult for the elderly to safely exercise outdoors, cardiologists began to tell their patients to walk the mall’s climate-controlled corridors for exercise and the trend grew.

Currently most malls in America offer ‘mall walking’ as an activity and allow walking groups access to the mall for up to three hours earlier than the shops open. Pensioner

Elayne Gilhousen explains:

The mall has furnished us with an area where we can hang our coats… we

walk at 9 a.m., from 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how many people

we stop and talk to… my husband has had a series of illnesses and, for us,

mall walking is essential, not only for the exercise but for the social activity,

being able to say hello to someone, and smiling at them. (Internicola 2010)

The mall, as opposed to a downtown area, gives the elderly person a sense of security.

‘Malls provide a place walkers can feel safe. You don’t have to worry about a dog slipping out. You always have a bathroom, and most malls have security. Even if you have a heart issue, they have defibrillators’ notes Gilhousen (in Internicola 2010). Zepp recounts a discussion that he had with an elderly mall goer in Florida, who noted: ‘My wife and I come here three times a week. I sit on the bench, watch people and read a lot.

It’s weather-protected and always clean’ (1997: 67). James Rouse encountered the same positivity when speaking with a widowed gentleman in Boston, ‘My wife died two years ago. I haven’t had much to do. Now on Sunday after church, I go down to the mall, spend the afternoon, have supper. I look forward to it all week’ (in Zepp 1997: 67).

21 The regional shopping mall has come to represent a part of the construction of self for

many individuals in America.

Shopping malls are the real postmodern sites of happy consciousness […] the self now is

a virtual object to such a degree of intensity and accumulation that the fascination of the

shopping mall is in the way of homecoming to a self that has been lost but now happily

discovered. (Kroker and Cook in Gottdiener 1995: 96)

Malls have been referred to as ‘cathedrals of consumption’ and in many ways they have

replaced the need for traditional communal spaces like cathedrals. The majority of

Americans are pilgrims to the ‘religion of the market’ and flock to shopping malls more

frequently than to churches (Phal 2003: 74). ‘If churches aren’t connecting people to true

happiness, how can we blame people for seeking happiness in a place that promises it to them accompanied by powerful experiences of water, light, trees and bodies?’ questions

Phal (2003: 74). The mall represents a form of utopia, one where the visitor can shed the difficulties of traffic and weather in the real cityscape; one where the visitor can feel safe and protected within the cement walls of this synthetic space. While the American public has been incased in this cocoon of consumption, however, the city and economy dissolved around them. ‘For a brief time, the encounter with the mall brings about a special and partial self-integration, which is the realization of the consumer self. But the moments pass too quickly while the impoverishment of humanity and public life remains in the deteriorating city’ says Gottdiener (1995: 96).

22 Websites such as DeadMalls, Labelscar and Penn Can Mall were created in response to the loss of the mall as a public space. On the websites users relay stories, videos and images of their favourite ‘dead malls’ for public comment, which reflect the ownership

and sense of place that adolescents growing up in the early 1980s and 1990s and today

associate with their local mall.

Yet, despite all the controversy surrounding malls in America, they stand as

one of the most significant styles of urban development in 20th century

America. In many suburbs and small cities, they were (and still are) the de-

facto ‘town centre,’ a meeting place and local focal point, and for many of us

they served as a crucial part of our formative years. Unlike downtowns –

which can thrive or die but rarely go away – malls are private property, and

thus can be fully redeveloped or removed from the landscape completely. As

such, many of these places that were crucial to many people’s lives are now

gone. (Damas and Schendel 2006)

These sites offer us a window into what the mall as a public space meant for many young

Americans. The dreams and experiences of many ‘mall rats’ show how these spaces have

helped shape many identities and visualize dreams. On DeadMalls, J. J. Buechenr writes:

‘The Mohawk Mall has a special place in my heart. There are so many memories there

including my first trip to the mall without any supervision and my first date in the 7th

grade’ (Blackbird and Florence 2000). Brett Castleberry comments:

I remember the somewhat scary escalator to the second floor [of the Colonial Plaza

23 Mall], with its corrugated, slinky-like handrails. The meshing teeth of the steps frightened me. Belk’s sold Scout uniforms and accessories, and seeing them on display made me dream of joining the Cub Scouts, which I did when I was old enough. (Blackbird and

Florence 2000)

In her testimonial on DeadMalls, Erica Hayes illustrates a very personal connection to the

Rainbow Mall.

As a child, my Dad used to take all of his kids there [to the Rainbow Mall] on

weekends. He grew up in the area but lived out of town (or state) for much of

our lives, and so when he came to visit, he’d pick up me and my brothers and

sister and we’d all go to the Rainbow Mall for lunch, Haagen Daas ice cream,

and toys. I’d ride the cool-shaped elevator up and down while my brothers

tried to hold the sides of the ‘up’ escalator. We made every trip an event –

there are pictures and movies of us there, just eating ice cream and acting

goofy… I’m heartbroken that a place that housed so many of my childhood

memories could fall so quickly. (Blackbird and Florence 2000)

The slow death of the regional shopping mall in the United States raises the questions:

When the mall is gone how will the United States define suburban public space? The mall as a postmodern space has come to characterize certain memories and associations in the lives of average Americans. As expressed in this section, the shopping mall has a

24 relevant place in the collective memories of thousands of Americans. The mall replaced the traditional town centre in many areas across the country and has become the default town centre. Now as America comes to terms with the loss of their second town centre the rise of the ‘Big Box’ store, with its lack of communal space, offers no consolation.

Conclusion

As our culture changes, we need to envision other models for creating public space, forms of urbanism that don’t quite exist yet. The suburbs will not all become dense in the same way as traditional urban centres, nor will the car spontaneously disappear; people will still want to be seen in public. (Robbins and Smiley 2002: 4)

The mall, while often labelled a problematic public space, has been the epicentre of suburban American culture for the last 50 years. Victor Gruen’s vision was to create a space that would be an ‘experimental utopia’, one where we could shake off the burdens of the day and indulge in a consumer fantasy. The enclosed shopping mall has to some effect achieved this; however, it has been at the expense of certain democratic freedoms.

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis and a change in consumer habits have led to the gradual decline of Gruen’s shopping mall; however, a growing nostalgia for this space is evident in many contemporary websites such as DeadMalls and Labelscar. These sites highlight the necessity for public space in the suburban and regional areas of the United States.

Without these spaces, groups such as adolescents and the elderly will miss out on a form of social interaction uniquely offered in the covered expanses of shopping malls.

25 Despite the constant effort to predict consumer sentiment, shopping mall developers never really looked to the future as they were always firmly rooted in the present. ‘Malls reward desire and money more than character and competence’ (Farrell 2003: 109).

Two-thirds of American’s biggest malls are more than 20 years old. That’s

not ancient as building go. But the featureless, flavourless, architecture of

many of these monstrosities will give further generations no good reason to

rehabilitate them, whereas we found plenty worth salvaging in aging

department stores, railways stations, hotels and other public edifices.

(Underhill 2004: 203)

When the shopping malls across America cease to be functional, perhaps Gruen’s plan for an ‘experimental utopia’ can be re-dressed in a more positive and sustainable light. As city planners and architects begin to re-imagine suburban America, perhaps a more functional and democratic space beyond the sterile ‘Big Box’ store will emerge. Despite the obvious inclination to turn unused shopping centres into ‘Big Box’ stores, perhaps the

‘lifestyle centre’ model, or a mutation of this model, will gain popularity, thus revitalizing aspects of the many ‘Main Streets’ that we have lost. Leinburger, however, suggests that more people will return to the dead city cores and create a walkable urban environment in reaction to the bland drivable suburban lifestyle. He predicts: ‘Walk-able urban development is already a growing part of the American built environment […]. It will eventually become part of the next American Dream over the next generation’

(Leinburger 2008: 176). Although the models mentioned above offer a new approach to our retail environment, it is difficult to predict whether these new mutations of Gruen’s

26 shopping mall offer a more sustainable or viable solution for public space. ‘All eyes to

the future’ says Leinburger (2008: 176).

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Contributor details:

Dr Lisa Scharoun is an assistant professor of Graphic Design at the University of

Canberra and holds a Ph.D. in Visual Communications from the Queensland College of

Art, Griffith University in Brisbane. Lisa completed a Bachelor of Arts in graphic design at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, FL, USA, and subsequently worked in the advertising industry in the United States before commencing a Masters in Design Studies at Central St. Martin’s College, University of the Arts London. On finishing her studies,

Lisa continued working in the advertising and design industry in London, specializing in branding and visual identity. She has previously held the position of head of the graphic design discipline at Deakin University in Melbourne and has also lectured in the visual communications department at Raffles Design Institute in Shanghai, China. Her research focus is on global graphic design strategy, emotions and value sets in visual communications and global concepts of utopia in contemporary design strategy. She has exhibited her design, photography and fine-artwork in the United States, United

Kingdom, Australia and China. Lisa was recently awarded first place in the fine-art collage category of the prestigious 2009 Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3) competition.

Contact:

32 Dr. Lisa Scharoun

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Faculty of Arts and Design

University of Canberra

Canberra, ACT Australia 6201

E-mail: [email protected]