January 4, 2008
The Decline (or Death?) of the Shopping Mall in America
As sacred as ancestral shrines in Japan, mosques in Iran, or beaches in Brazil, the shopping mall has for decades been a place of worship in the United States. Since its inception in the 1940s, it’s grown to define and represent the very culture of mainstream America - and like other representations of the American culture, the mall has been copied and appropriated by nations the world over. But now, while sprawling indoor shopping centers and hypermarkets flourish in far-off countries of the first, second, and third worlds, the mall in America might be on its way out. Not one new indoor shopping mall will be built in America till at least 2009, compared to 5 built in 2005. In 2002 just 19% of U.S. retail purchases were made in malls, down from 38% in 1995.
A December 19 article in the Economist tries to pinpoint the reasons behind the decline:
One reason for the malls’ problems is that the suburbs have changed. When the Southdale shopping centre opened on the outskirts of Minneapolis, the suburbs were almost entirely white and middle-class. Whites were fleeing a wave of new arrivals from the South (the black population of Minneapolis rose by 155% between 1940 and 1960). 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 as 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.
The precipitous decline of the indoor shopping mall does not, as we all know, mean that Americans have stopped shopping. Instead, the article notes that consumerism is thriving in downtown shopping districts and outdoor shopping meccas.
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