The Rise and Fall of the American Mall

Post WW11 America was a prosperous place. The middle class was growing and re-locating to the new mass built suburban developments on the outskirts of cities. The suburbs provided a safe, clean community away from the overcrowded cities, which were often riddled with poverty and violence. With the growth of consumerism, Americans needed somewhere to spend their newly disposable income, so here comes the mall.

In 1952, Austrian shopfitter, Victor Guren, created the first fully enclosed shopping mall, named Southdale Mall, in Edina, Minnesota. Guren’s view was to create a space where shoppers will be so bedazzled by a store’s surroundings, they will be drawn unconsciously, continually to shop in a master-planned, mixed-use community. (Scharoun, 2012). Guren believed that the town centre was the “heart, brain and soul of the city” (Chung, et al, 2001: 387), something which, suburbia did not have.

With the creation of the mall, Guren could recreate the town centre minus the negative aspects. Due to the location of the suburbs, and the fact that they were often isolated communities, most families were reliant on the motorcar; further providing comfortable and safe transportation to access the malls, via the new Interstate Highway System constructed in the 1950s. The purpose of these new malls was not only to be a place to shop but a community space where consumers could dine, entertain and socialize.

By creating this harmonic physical order of space, professor of sociology Sharon Zukin notes that…