Research Paper
Shopping Malls have been around for centuries their ancestor were enclosed such as the agora of ancient Greece or the Palais Royal of prerevolutionary Paris, and covered like the Jerusalem bazaar and the famous Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. There are much closer ancestors but as famous as the old ones, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan built in 1867 is well known as it is a covered prolongation of the street with its shops, café and restaurants on two levels. The mall that we know nowadays was introduced by Victor Gruen, who designed the first famous modern mall, the indoor version of the traditional marketplace; it was an enclosed climate-controlled indoor mall in Minnesota in 1956. Since then malls have been around us and are now part of our culture. This paper will argue that malls play significant roles in suburban life.
Some people believe that malls are destructive towards our life style. In some ways this is true. Malls do standardize the way of shopping by bringing all the wants and need of our society together but people forget that malls implements their own positive lifestyle. I will highlight three main arguments to demonstrate that malls represent well our culture and play a significant role in the suburban life. First by their design as there are nowadays not only places to shop but are artistic structures, secondly by the way they serve socials functions and finally that they provide a safe environment.
Shopping malls are originally designed to attract consumers but nowadays all malls represent more than shopping. Malls represent a way of living, to create that atmosphere; the best designers are employed to design malls which represent our culture.
Shopping centers are an architectural space, out-fitted with commercial art and designed artefacts, manufactured and distributed in a market economy and so reflect our personal perception, social norms, ethical values and domestic architecture.(1)
Shopping centers in America are now part of the national identity and of what is called the “American dream”. James J. Farrell a historian who directs the American studies program at St. Olaf College wrote that “shopping centers can reveal cultural patterns as culture is what happens when we are not paying attention. When people shops there are not only purchasing good and services but are most of the time under a feeling of desire which then shape there own individuals values and cultural values. (2)”
Nowadays malls are no longer made for just shopping, but are built to host cultural events such as art, concert and other cultural exhibitions, some also host charity events and any types of social activity which contribute to the suburban community. Malls are also a place of entertainment where you can take an elevator and find supermarkets, bookstores, banks, movie theaters, restaurants, bars, bowling, arcade games and obviously hundreds of shops. By bringing all the needs and wants of our community and providing it to us in a safe environment, fulfill, excite and boost the lives of suburban.
David Guterson, journalist and novelist on assignment for Harper’s magazine, spent a week in The Mall of America and conclude his assignment with the feeling that “The Mall of America had been imagined by its creators not merely as a marketplace but as a national tourist attraction and an immense zone of entertainments.” I chose this note as I think that it shows well how the design of a mall is important the suburban community as much for economical and social activity.
Despite the fact that Shopping malls are market-driven businesses, they are nowadays primarily a social environment. They are an integral element in the “collective consciousness,” as geographer Alan baker used the term to refer to landscape creation and perception that is linked to a national identity (3).
As every ones knows about Global Warming and making effort to make the planet “Green”, Designers are also adapting malls and making them more ecological everyday. For examples it becomes usual to see solar panel on the roof of malls or to know that managers are being asked to watch the climate control to use less energy. Shopping centers are known as being an environmental way of shopping as it reduces the use of any medium of travel to find different types of goods and services as everything is in the same place.
In a near future, malls will be designed as a “hyperport” where all the needs and wants of the society will be found in a safe environment. Where thousand of people will be able to congregate and have time to relax during their lunch break, weekends and flights for those in transfer into airports. Malls are and will continue to be design following the principle of creating a peaceful atmosphere, where needs, culture, environment, and entertainment will meet to provide us a better lifestyle.
Sociologists have long known that people visit shopping center for far more than commercial reasons. Several very revealing articles over the last dozen or more years have shown that shopping centers are important places for social interaction where people may wind up meeting future spouses and friends; where families go simply to stroll, to see people and to be seen by them and where young people go to “hang out” and socialize. More than twenty years ago the concept of “socialrecreational shopping”, was introduced by Edward Tauber who insightfully stated that “not all shopping motives, by any means are even related to the product,” (4). By that he showed us that not everyone is going to the mall simply to purchase goods and services but some goes for other motives that are mainly social ones.
To show you the social importance of malls I took two different segregations, the elderly and teenagers. Those two opposite age group that are normally being rejected by our modern society seemed to me as the perfect examples to demonstrate that some people are going to the mall for social reasons and that malls play an important roles in their social lives.
The mall is a central life setting for many elderly persons who frequent it on a regular basis. They walk back and forth, up and down the common area of the mall, greeting friends, sitting down with them and having a light dinner at a malls’ restaurant. Their time in the mall usually conforms to a set of routines; they will be found in specific seating areas at a regular time, and have a coffee at the same restaurant at the same time everyday. These patterning’s of behaviour among the elderly characterize the nature of their social interaction at the mall. More than a social world, the world of the elderly in the mall takes its shape and character from the face to face relationships of the people who regularly are a part of it such as their companions but also waiters, security guards etc... For these elderly most of who are retired, live alone, and are most probably widowed, there is now little or no need to expend energy, concern and time in the areas of career, job development, self improvement, spousal relations, or even in family and community activities. Cut off from these concerns and ties, their status and power position in the larger society is lowered, they find meaning in the construction and maintenance of networks of personal relationships in with others like themselves.(5)
For the teenagers or mall rats and mall bunnies as they are being called in malls, are as the elderly people major actors in the social life of malls. Like elderly people teenagers come in a regular basis, they arrive in groups or individually to meet friends and use the mall as a place for social gathering. Suburban kids come to the malls to look around, meet and make friends, stay away from home, and hang out because they have nowhere else to go. Once inside the mall they wander around the different shops, playing video games in the arcade, smoking cigarettes, showing off their latest hair, makeup and clothing styles, and waiting for something, anything to happen to make their day a bit more special than others. Most of them will stay until nine-thirty or ten, when the stores close and the mall shuts down.
Ed a 16 year old “mall rat” was interviewed by George Lewis a sociologist at the University of Pacific. Ed explains the social networking that takes place in the mall. “I met all these people here. I’ve met lots of other people too. This is the place where you can always find someone. If you know somebody, they know somebody else, they‘ll probably see them here, and you know that person. So when you come here, you kind of build on people.”
The Social world of these teens revolves around their contacts and time at the mall. This world of the teenager is, in its larger sense, one of segregation from adults and the assumption of adult sexual, economic and social roles. This segregation, and the relative lack of any clearly defined and socially supported roles for youth, help define the mall community of “rats and bunnies,” especially those who have opted out, or been driven from, socially acceptable school and family settings. For those teenager malls are a suburban equivalent to the urban street corners where inner city kids congregate. (6)
The elderly and teenagers congregate in malls for three main reasons; first, and probably the most important, elders and teens both represent social groupings for which our society provides little social space. For the elderly once they are retired, they are cut off from the familiar and fulfilling world of work and are most likely to be treated more and more as children by their family and other adults. For the teens, caught as they are between the status of childhood and adulthood, have few social spaces or physical places open where they can congregate and develop their own contacts and social networks and this is where the mall offer it’s lure for both segregation.
Secondly the elderly and teenagers are to great extent faceless persons to adults, they are categorized as “old people” and “kids” and because of the unimportance of their marginal status, they tend to be overlooked as individuals and so their social reaction increases their need to affirm that identity and to create meaningful community for themselves. It also means that in the mall setting the elderly and teenagers are nearly invisible to hurrying shoppers and so there social “activities” do not disrupt the mall management. Finally another fact that shows that teenagers and elderly are welcome into the mall environment is by an economical point of view, The elderly can be used to advantage to further the mall’s image of community by publicizing their support of community programs and for the teens, many of them work in some store, fast food and leave money in the video arcade and the record stores. Therefore they do have some economic links to some of the business operating in the mall. The American shopping mall has been bemoaned by critics for its impersonality, its uniformity, its total focus on meaningful interaction as rational and economic nature. Some people ask; where are the primary relations, the face to face interactions, the social networks that exist along with the economic transactions of the traditional marketplace, the local community, or even the urban village? This research paper shows that, for shoppers in the mall, one does indeed need to look elsewhere for the primary interactive ties of community, no matter how cleverly mall management creates the illusion of community at the mall. In the end, it seems, this is a shared illusion neither management nor shoppers are fooled by it, but both can pretend that they are creating or engaging in the meaningful and socially necessary relations of community.
Ironically, then, the real community ties that do exist in the mall have little to do with its economic function. The elder and the teen spend very little money there and do not frequent the mall for economic reasons. They are there, each day, to greet friends, to create and strengthen their meaningful, face to face primary relationship, to define themselves as a social world. It’s a community of kind to which they can give emotional support and from which they can draw a sense of self and group identity (7).
To show you that malls provide a safe environment, I will continue to use the elderly and teenagers. But first I would like to define what is the typical shopping center, it is an abstracted reincarnation of a main street, where pedestrian have the right of way over vehicular traffic, where all store façades are attractive and where all of the merchants agree to maintain regular hours and carefully control their signage and sales pitches and techniques to provide a safe time and environment to shoppers.
Elderly go to the mall rather than in a main street for a simple social and safety reasons as the mall provides them a safe and comfortable place to shop and wander around. A great majority of malls have instituted some form of walking program for the elderly, those programs encourages the elderly to walk laps and to record their own progress. That program gave the social name of “miler” to all those elderly who come on regular basis to run. They arrive when the doors open up in the morning and begin their daily lap around the mall being observed by silent mannequins and CCTV cameras.
Pat a regular miler, was interviewed by George Lewis and describes his typical morning at the mall. Pat arrives by car a few minutes before the door unlock and then do his five miles laps around the mall with his two companions and then sits down to his favorite restaurant, where he will have a drink and talk to other milers.
That program show well that malls are more than a simple place to shop but a safe place that provide social activities for such communities as the elderly and teenagers.
For teenagers malls also provide a safe environment to “hang out”, they can congregate, make friends and grow outside their home and schools and still being in a safe environment as the mall keep them away from the danger of the street such as fights, drugs, accident, and gangs which has become recently a major problem affecting Americans.
Finally in any mall the security is optimal, to provide a safe and relaxing time to every shopper, every mall is nowadays equipped with CCTV cameras and security guards.
I would like to conclude this research paper by a comparison that I found into a documentary called “Mall R Us”, this movie was made about the philosophy that malls are the church of the 21st century. Churches used to be built to show how rich a country was and to show how powerful the Catholic religion was. Malls are now built to show how wealthy a country is and to what extent its citizens have the power of consuming. Churches were designed by brilliant architect, just as malls are nowadays. Finally churches create an atmosphere of peace, safety and tranquility, and designers are trying there best to create the same atmosphere in malls so consumers feel relaxed and can forget about what is “out side” the mall to have a pleasant time.
All the energy and effort put into malls, to provide a unique experience and time to any shoppers that will enter by the main entrance doors, shows well how councils, designers and managers like to provide an ultimate safe and social place where every person of today’s society can come and find its needs and wants throughout our complex social system. Without malls, our lives would be much more complicated, different and very hard to imagine as malls are nowadays part of our culture, identity and lives of everyday and so, show how significant and important the roles of malls are in our life.

(1) James J. Farell, Shopping for American culture; writing and reading across the curriculum p.431
(1) Alan R.H Baker, “Collective consciousness and the last landscape: National ideology and the commune council of Mesland (Loir-et-Cher) as Landscape architect during the 19th Century”, chapter 12 in ideology and landscape in historical Perspective edited by Alan baker and Gideon Biger: 255-88
(2) One Nation Under Goods: malls and the seductions of American Shopping (Smithsonian Books, 2003).
(3) Edward Tauber, “Sociorecreational shopping,” Human Behaviour 2, no. 4; reproduced in intellectual digest 4, no. 3 (November 1973): 38
(4) Robert Atchley, social forces and Aging (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1985), pp. 56-58.
(5) Martin Millison, Teenage Behaviour, In shopping Centers, International Council of Shopping Centers, 1996, p. 11
(6) George Lewis, The mall as a refuge; writing and reading across the curriculum p.431