Shopping mall

A regional mall is as per the International Council of Shopping Centers, in the United States, a shopping mall with 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m²) to 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m²) gross leasable area with at least two anchor stores.[7]

A superregional mall is, per the International Council of Shopping Centers, in the US, a shopping mall with over 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m²) of gross leasable area, three or more anchors, mass merchant, more variety, fashion apparel, and serves as the dominant shopping venue for the region (25 miles or 40 km) in which it is located.[7]

Not classified as malls are smaller formats such as strip malls and neighborhood shopping centers, and specialized format such as power centers, festival marketplaces, and outlet centers.[6]

On the other hand, in some countries, many shopping centres less than half or a quarter of the size of the U.S. minimum to be considered a mall, 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m²), have "mall" in their names – see List of shopping centres in Namibia or List of shopping centres in Zambia for examples.

The world's largest malls with over 500,000 square metres (5,400,000 sq ft) of gross leasable area are in China, Thailand, The Philippines, more than half again as large as previous contenders such as the Dubai Mall.

The International Council of Shopping Centers classifies Asia-Pacific, European, U.S., and Canadian shopping centers into the following types:[6][8][9][10]

Abbreviations: SC=shopping center/centre, GLA = Gross Leasable Area, NLA = Net Leasable Area, AP=Asia-Pacific, EU=Europe, Can=Canada, US=United States of America
^*does not apply to Europe

Shopping centers in general, may have their origins in public markets and, in the Middle East, covered bazaars. In 1798 the first covered shopping passage was built in Paris, the Passage du Caire .[11] The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island was the first shopping arcade in the United States in 1828.[12]

Dayton Arcade in the 1920s

In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping center was created away from downtowns.[13] Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square, Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri (1924).[14]

The suburban shopping center concept evolved further in the United States after World War II (see table above) with larger open-air shopping centers anchored by major department stores, such as the 550,000-square-foot (51,000 m²) Broadway-Crenshaw Center in Los Angeles built in 1947, anchored by a five-story Broadway and a May Company California.[15]

In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the term "shopping mall" was first used, but in the original sense of the word "mall", that is, a pedestrian promenade (in U.K. usage a "shopping precinct"). Early downtown pedestrianized malls included the Kalamazoo Mall (the first, in 1959), "Shoppers' See-Way" in Toledo, Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach, Santa Monica Mall (1965).[16][17][18] Although Bergen Mall (opened 1957) led other suburban shopping centers in using "mall" in their names, these types of properties were still referred to as "shopping centers" until the late 1960s, when the term "shopping mall" started to be used generically for large suburban shopping centers.[19]

The enclosed shopping center, which would eventually be known as the shopping mall, did not appear until the mid-1950s. One of the earliest examples was the Valley Fair Shopping Center in Appleton, Wisconsin,[20] which opened in March 1955. Valley Fair featured a number of modern features including central heating and cooling, a large outdoor parking area, semi-detached anchor stores, and restaurants. Later that year the world's first fully enclosed shopping mall was opened in Luleå, in northern Sweden (architect: Ralph Erskine) and was named Shopping; the region now claims the highest shopping center density in Europe.[21]

The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen.[22][23][24] This new generation of regional-size shopping centers began with the Gruen-designed Southdale Center, which opened in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minnesota, United States in October 1956.[23][24] For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of the twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell.[25]

The first retail complex to be promoted as a "mall" was Paramus, New Jersey's Bergen Mall. The center, which opened with an open-air format in 1957, was enclosed in 1973. Aside from Southdale Center, significant early enclosed shopping malls were Harundale Mall (1958) in Glen Burnie, Maryland,[26] Big Town Mall (1959) in Mesquite, Texas, Chris-Town Mall (1961) in Phoenix, Arizona, and Randhurst Center (1962) in Mount Prospect, Illinois.

Other early malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtowns into the 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. Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl.[27][28]

In the United States, developers such as A. Alfred Taubman of Taubman Centers extended the concept further in 1980, with terrazzo tiles at the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey, indoor fountains, and two levels allowing a shopper to make a circuit of all the stores. Taubman believed carpeting increased friction, slowing down customers, so it was removed. Fading daylight through glass panels was supplemented by gradually increased electric lighting, making it seem like the afternoon was lasting longer, which encouraged shoppers to linger.[29][30]

Belz Factory Outlet Mall, an abandoned shopping mall in Allen, Texas, United States

In the United States, in the mid-1990s, malls were still being constructed at a rate of 140 a year.[31] But in 2001, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that underperforming and vacant malls, known as "greyfield" and "dead mall" estates, were an emerging problem. In 2007, a year before the Great Recession, no new malls were built in America, for the first time in 50 years.[32] City Creek Center Mall in Salt Lake City, which opened in March 2012, was the first to be built since the recession.[14]

In recent years, the number of dead malls increased significantly in the early 21st century because the economic health of malls across the United States has been in decline, as identified by high vacancy rates. From 2006 to 2010, the percentage of malls that are considered to be "dying" by real estate experts (have a vacancy rate of at least 40%), unhealthy (20–40%), or in trouble (10–20%) all increased greatly, and these high vacancy rates only partially decreased from 2010 to 2014.[33] In 2014, nearly 3% of all malls in the United States were considered to be "dying" (40% or higher vacancy rates) and nearly one-fifth of all malls had vacancy rates considered "troubling" (10% or higher). Some real estate experts say the "fundamental problem" is a glut of malls in many parts of the country creating a market that is "extremely over-retailed".[33]

Online shopping has also emerged as a competition to shopping malls. In the United States, online shopping has accounted for an increasing share of total retail sales.[34] In 2013, roughly 200 out of 1,300 malls across the United States were going out of business.[35] To combat this trend, developers have converted malls into other uses including attractions such as parks, movie theaters, gyms, and even fishing lakes.[36] In the United States, the 600,000 square foot Highland Mall will be a campus for Austin Community College.[34] In France, the So Ouest mall outside of Paris was designed to resemble elegant, Louis XV-style apartments and includes 17,000 square metres (180,000 sq ft) of green space.[37] The Australian mall company Westfield launched an online mall (and later a mobile app) with 150 stores, 3,000 brands and over 1 million products.[38]

The COVID-19 pandemic also significantly impacted the retail industry. Government regulations forced mall closures, increased entrance controls, and imposed strict public sanitation requirements.[39]

The former Camp Snoopy Amusement park before it was Nickelodeon Universe at the center of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the third-largest shopping mall in the United States

The size of the largest shopping centers and malls at any given time continued to increase throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. The Outlets at Bergen Town Center, originally called 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.[40] The mall, located just outside New York City, was planned in 1955 by Allied Stores to have 100 stores in a 1,500,000 sq ft (140,000 m²) mall with three department store anchors.[41][42] At approximately 2,400,000 sq ft (220,000 m²), the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Hawaii was one of the largest malls in the United States when it opened for business in August 1959.

The largest enclosed shopping mall from 1986 to 2004 was the 350,000 m² (3,800,000 sq ft) West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.[43] Currently, the largest mall in the world is the New South China Mall in Dongguan, China with a gross floor area of 892,000 m² (9,600,000 sq ft). The world's second-largest shopping mall is the Golden Resources Mall in Beijing, China with a gross floor area of 680,000 m² (7,300,000 sq ft). SM Megamall in the Philippines, is the world's third-largest at 542,980 m² (5,844,600 sq ft) of gross floor area. The fourth largest shopping mall in the world is SM City North EDSA in Quezon City, Philippines with a gross floor area of 504,900 m² (5,435,000 sq ft) and the fifth largest shopping mall is 1 Utama in Malaysia at 465,000 m² (5,010,000 sq ft) of gross floor area.

The most visited shopping mall in the world and third-largest mall in the United States is the Mall of America, located near the Twin Cities in Bloomington, Minnesota. However, several Asian malls are advertised as having more visitors, including Mal Taman Anggrek, Kelapa Gading Mall and Pluit Village, all in Jakarta, Indonesia; Berjaya Times Square in Malaysia; SM City North EDSA, SM Mall of Asia and SM Megamall, all in Metro Manila, Philippines. The largest mall in South Asia is Lucky One Mall in Karachi, Pakistan.

The Philippines has the most number of shopping malls in the top 100 largest shopping malls in the world with 22.

The mall in the Water Tower Place, an early vertical mall opened in 1975, has eight levels of shops.

High land prices in populous cities have led to the concept of the "vertical mall," in which space allocated to retail is configured over a number of stories accessible by elevators and/or escalators (usually both) 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.[44] The concept of a vertical mall was originally conceived in the late 1960s by the Mafco Company, former shopping center development division of Marshall Field & Co. The Water Tower Place skyscraper, Chicago, Illinois, was built in 1975 by Urban Retail Properties. It contains a hotel, luxury condominiums, and office space and sits atop a block-long base containing an eight-level atrium-style retail mall that fronts on the Magnificent Mile.

Vertical malls are common in densely populated conurbations such as Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Bangkok. Times Square in Hong Kong is a principal example.[44]

A vertical mall may also be built where the geography prevents building outward or there are other restrictions on construction, such as historical buildings or significant archeology. The Darwin Shopping Centre and associated malls in Shrewsbury, UK, are built on the side of a steep hill, around the former town walls;[45] consequently the shopping center is split over seven floors vertically – two locations horizontally – connected by elevators, escalators and bridge walkways. Some establishments incorporate such designs into their layout, such as Shrewsbury's former McDonald's, split into four stories with multiple mezzanines which featured medieval castle vaults – complete with arrowslits – in the basement dining rooms.

A common feature of shopping malls is a food court: this typically consists of a number of fast food vendors of various types, surrounding a shared seating area.

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. 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.

Shopping mall is a term used predominantly in North America and some other countries that follow U.S. usage (India,[3] U.A.E.,[46] etc.) and others (Australia,[5] etc.) follow U.K. usage.

In North America, Persian Gulf countries, and India, the term shopping mall is usually applied to enclosed retail structures (and is generally abbreviated to simply mall), while shopping center/centre usually refers to open-air retail complexes; both types of facilities usually have large parking lots, face major traffic arterials, and have few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighbourhoods.[47] Outside of North America, "shopping precinct" and "shopping arcade" are also used. In Canada, "shopping centre" is often used officially (as in Square One Shopping Centre), but conversationally, "mall" is mostly used.

There are a reported 222 malls in Europe. In 2014, these malls had combined sales of US$12.47 billion.[48] This represented a 10% bump in revenues from the prior year.[48]

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, both open-air and enclosed centers are commonly referred to as shopping centres. Mall primarily refers to either a shopping mall – a place where a collection of shops all adjoin a pedestrian area – or an exclusively pedestrianized street that allows shoppers to walk without interference from vehicle traffic.

The majority of British enclosed shopping centres, the equivalent of a U.S. mall, are located in city centres, usually found in old and historic shopping districts and surrounded by subsidiary open air shopping streets. Large examples include West Quay in Southampton; Manchester Arndale; Bullring Birmingham; Liverpool One; Trinity Leeds; Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow; and Eldon Square in Newcastle upon Tyne. In addition to the inner city shopping centres, large UK conurbations will also have large out-of-town "regional malls" such as the Metrocentre in Gateshead; Meadowhall Centre, Sheffield serving South Yorkshire; the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester; White Rose Centre in Leeds; the Merry Hill Centre near Dudley; and Bluewater in Kent. These centres were built in the 1980s and 1990s, but 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. Westfield Stratford City, in Stratford (London), is the largest shopping centre in Europe with over 330 shops, 50 restaurants and an 11 screen cinema and Westfield London is the largest inner-city shopping center in Europe. Bullring, Birmingham is the busiest shopping centre in the UK welcoming over 36.5 million shoppers in its opening year.[49]

In Russia, on the other hand, as of 2013 a large number of new malls had been built near major cities, notably the MEGA malls such as Mega Belaya Dacha mall near Moscow. In large part they were financed by international investors and were popular with shoppers from the emerging middle class.[50]

A shopping property management firm is a company that specializes in owning and managing shopping malls. Most shopping property management firms own at least 20 malls. Some firms use a similar naming scheme for most of their malls; for example, Mills Corporation puts "Mills" in most of its mall names and SM Prime Holdings of the Philippines puts "SM" in all of its malls, as well as anchor stores such as The SM Store, SM Appliance Center, SM Hypermarket, SM Cinema, and SM Supermarket. In the UK, The Mall Fund changes the name of any center it buys to "The Mall (location)", using its pink-M logo; when it sells a mall the center reverts to its own name and branding, such as the Ashley Centre in Epsom.[51] Similarly, following its rebranding from Capital Shopping Centres, intu Properties renamed many of its centres to "intu (name/location)" (such as intu Lakeside; again, malls removed from the network revert to their own brand (see for instance The Glades in Bromley).

Shopping center management and advisory firms are bringing about professional management practices to the largely fragmented shopping center development industry in India. Historically, land ownership in India, has been fragmented and as a byproduct shopping center development, which rendered the single mall developers vulnerable to dubious advice and practices, since standard benchmarks, knowledge resources, and skilled people were scarce. This is changing as new firms promoted by former shopping center managers are stepping in to bridge the gap between ownership and professional management.

Mall management is slowly becoming a trend and is much sought after services in Asia and other markets.

One controversial aspect of malls has been their effective displacement of traditional main streets or high streets. Some consumers prefer malls, with their parking garages, controlled environments, and private security guards, over CBDs or downtowns, which frequently have limited parking, poor maintenance, outdoor weather, and limited police coverage.[52][53]

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.[54] See Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins.

Some wholesale market complexes also function as shopping malls in that they contain retail space which operate as stores in normal malls do but also act as producer vendor outlets that can take large orders for export.