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Marta Werbanowska

How the suburban society shaped shopping centers

and how shopping centers shape the suburban society

Since the very beginning of the 20 th century, cities and shopping agglomerations

in the United States have always gone hand in hand. It is difficult to even imagine

one without the other, as people need to shop for, at least, their basic everyday

products, and the stores simply need customers. The cities are clusters of

individual people, families, communities, just as the shopping centers are

clusters of stores. The two phenomena, to a large extent, even seem to have the

same reason for their very origin namely, commercialism. Numerous large

cities, especially the ones which gained their significance in the industrial era at

the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, emerged due to the commercial reasons

gathering everyone and everything in a single place was simply more efficient

and more economical for everyone, and as the clustered factories needed

hundreds of employees each, thousands of people came to settle in their vicinity,

creating new, extensive communities. The spirit of nearly every city is the spirit of

productivism, focused on having things done quickly, cheaply, and in large

amounts, on developing in terms of size, wealth and quality. The nature of

shopping centers as creations of commercialism is even more obvious, as

commercialism inevitably breeds consumerism. Shopping centers are the

temples of the latter, creating the lifestyle in which wanting, buying and having

are the primary values. The developments of the urban architecture, the urban

community and the shopping centers are closely connected, since all threeshape one another in a way. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the

interconnections between the shopping centers and the urban and, later on, the

suburban population and to show how they have been affecting each other for

over a hundred years.

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The history of the shopping center as we know it today begins

approximately in the 1920s. By that time, the turnover of the department stores

which were located seemingly convincingly for both its owners and the

customers in city centers began to decrease. Representatives of the middle

class, who were the target customers of midscale and upscale department

stores, had moved out of the city centers, as they could now afford buying

houses in the cleaner, quieter and safer suburban areas. The middle-class

husbands and fathers would now come to the city centers for work solely, and

they did not have the time to go shopping during the week. The middle-class

housewives who did not work had no reason to go to city centers at all. Of

course, the neighborhoods they had moved out of did not remain empty for long,

as new inhabitants moved in. However, since the downtown districts were not as

prestigous as the suburbs, only those who could not afford better housing

conditions moved in to the city centers. Those working class laborers and poor

immigrants were obviously not interested in shopping for designer clothing and

beauty products offered by the department stores, as they simply could not afford

any of such goods. Therefore, the stores had to follow their customers and make

their locations more convenient for the middle class shoppers. The 1920's saw

the dawn of the car culture, when suburbian dwellers began to be almostaddicted to their automobiles. Everyone needed to drive in order to get to work

from the suburbs to the city center, and so the stores moved to the vicinity of

large roads. Those "one-stop" clusters of stores offering a quite varied range of

products, from groceries to clothing, were easier to approach for the middle

class. The white collar employees could visit them on their way back from work

and their whole families could go shopping at weekends, since the location was

not that far from their suburban neighborhoods. The idea of locating the stores

near main communication arteries proved to be a success; soon, the clusters of

stores grew larger and larger, forming mile-long developments lining the

highways. As more and more shoppers came, the store owners began to invest

in larger parcels of land, so that their customers had somewhere to park their

cars while they went shopping (by that time, many municipalities had forbidden

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parking cars on curbs, since it resulted in less driving space and more dense

traffic congestion). Buying such large areas of land meant costly expenditures,

and sometimes single store owners could not afford it therefore, they began to

form associations, or to sell their stores to the wealthier owners of largerer

department stores, which usually formed the center for a gathering of stores in

the area of those "miracle miles". Such centralized ownership was an important

step on the way of forming the modern shopping centers, developments owned

by a single wealthy enterpreneur or a consortium, who would lease their

shopping spaces to particular store owners. Since the entire shopping area was

owned by only one person or a group of people, they could decide about the

architectural forms of the stores and about their tenants, who no longer could

locate their stores randomly. This later resulted in coherent shopping centers,

forming integrated architectural structures, designed to have a particular effect on

the shoppers. Soon, however, the very reason which motivated store owners to

locate their businesses near highways turned out to be the reason for their exile

from there. The car culture was developing rapidly, more and more people

owned automobiles, and soon traffic congestion was a major problem. Local

authorities rebuilt the old highways, which connected the suburbs with the city

center, into gigantic, six-lane freeways, from which it was difficult to access thenearby stores. Numerous bypassing routes were also constructed, which were

located further from the shopping areas. Moreover, the customers grew tired of

shopping in stores located near large streets, noisy, polluted and plain ugly. The

shopping centers once again had to follow their customer's preferences they

converted into regional shopping centers, located in the vicinity of the suburban

neighborhoods or even in the very neighborhoods themselves rather than

near the freeways.

By 1950's the shopping centers had found a steady location. Building

regional shopping areas in the suburbs provided the store owners with a

permanent inflow of customers, and thus also money. However, the free

market has its rights, and the pioneers of regional shopping centers soon had to

face numerous competitors, who discovered the goldmine in the form of middle

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class suburban shoppers. The new challenge for the shopping centers' owners

was attracting more customers than their rivals. Therefore, they had to think of

something else, apart from the offered products, that would make the shoppers

come to their malls, and so the architecture, design and the entire "aura" of

shopping edifices began to gain more significance than evere before. The

owners discovered that their customers would come to their malls not only to

shop for the items they had listed, but also to meet, talk, and spend some time

together. In other words, regional shopping malls became venues for social life to

be conducted, they began to shape the communities in the neighborhoods of

which they were located. Not only retail stores, but also cafes and restaurants

began to open inside the shopping centers, so that their visitors could come not

only when they need to shop, but also whenever they wanted to spend their

leisure time in some nice place. The "shoppers" became a community in itself.

Their demands grew further, and the owners were eager to provide them with

more attractions: bowling alleys, movie theaters, video arcades in the decades to

follow. One more improvement was also introduced in the 1950's, namely the

enclosure of the shopping center. Was it for purely practical reasons, to protect

the shoppers from possible bad weather conditions, or whether the intention was

to unify the architectural design of the centers the result of enclosing all of theboutiques, cafes and pedestrian alleys under one rooftop was the fact that now

the separateness of the shopping mall from the rest of the world was also

physical. The malls were now not only the communities, but, in a sense, there

now was the possibility of creating new worlds within the interiors of the centers.

Once the shoppers entered the enclosed area of the mall, they were moved to

another realm, away from the traffic, from the streets, from their cars, from their

jobs and problems they entered a different world, the creation of which had

been in the hands of architects and designers, who were aware of the fact that

the proper creation of a "shopping world" can have a particular effect on its

visitors. Therefore, they started to design these worlds in such a way that the

shoppers could forget themselves completely and lose themselves in the

shopping fever.

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Two dominating design themes can be noticed in shopping malls

construction from the 1950's up until today the "rustic mall" and the "urban

mall". Both of them simulate the real world in order to make their visitors feel

comfortable, at home, at ease, and most importantly willing to spend their

money. The rustic mall appeared a little earlier than the urban mall. The main

idea behind it was to underplay the large size of the malls, which were now of

enourmous sizes, including several department stores, not even mentioning

other facilities. The designers did not want to scare the customers away with

large, intimidating and uncozy blocks of commercial outlets, and so they attracted

them with the inviting and friendly atmosphere of a country village the

pedestrian areas were small and curvy, so the shoppers could not see the

gigantic size of the mall immediately. The interior of a rural mall, paradoxically,

imitates outdoor surroundings benches, flowing water streams and sculptures

inevitably bring a park landscape to mind, so that the customers could feel that

they are relaxing in natural surroundings. They can unwind, forget themselves,

and get in the mood for shopping, which seems to them to be an accidental

activity in such circumstances. The urban mall, on the other hand, tempts its

visitors with a completely different aura. It is supposed to imitate the downtown

yet another paradox in the mall architecture, as the very beginning of theshopping centers resulted from the store owners' chase after the customers

which escaped the city centers. However, the "mall downtown" gives its visitors

the city center in its utopian version, devoid of litter in the streets, gangsters, the

homeless, pollution and noise. It offers the dazzling carnival atmosphere of neon

lights, exciting city rush, variety of services and products offered in a milieu which

is completely safe. Its large size is no longer masked, but rather highlighted as its

advantage, so that the customers can admire the splendor of the "big city life".

The urban mall designers went even further with their city-imitating idea, and so

hotels, medical centers, offices and even housing apartments are now all a part

of such a mall. As a matter of fact, the mall has become the city. One can work,

eat and sleep in the mall, which thus becomes the real world.

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Nowadays, the regional shopping malls in the United States are

masterpieces of commercial architecture. Their function is no longer only the one

of providing goods to the customers, but also to provide them with entertainment,

food, and very often all the social life that they need. They have been designed

to be more than just a place to shop; the mall is supposed to be "the experience".

However, of course, the mall owners do not provide their customers with that

experience as an act of charity, and so nearly every aspect of the design is a

psychological move, supposed to make the visitors buy the offered products.

Peter Gibian, in his essay entitled "The Art of Being Off-Center: Shopping Center

Spaces and Spectacles" compares the "mall experience" to a love story in a

motion picture the customer, charmed by the atmosphere, eventually falls in

love with a piece of merchandise. People who come to the mall very often buy

things impulsively, without having it planned. They come to the mall to meet their

friends, to spend their free time in beautiful surroundings, to have a cup of coffee,

and then, just by the way, they see something they like. All in all, they pay for the

atmosphere of the place. However, the designer's purely commercial intentions

resulted in something more, and the mall-goers became a community.

It is very often the case that the shopping mall is actually the best or,

sometimes, even the only place in the neighborhood were people can socializeduring their leisure time. They now perform the functions of primary public

spaces, attracting varied yet, to some extent, still chosen by the designers

groups of people. Some come because they love to browse in things, teenagers

come to hang out when they skip school, housewives come to meet their

girlfriends over a cup of coffee, joggers come to exercise, as the mall alleys are

safer than the real streets and there is no threat of being surprised by a sudden

rainfall. A good example of a "mall-community" has been presented in Kevin

Smith's 1995 movie "Mallrats", a seemingly careless comedy which, however,

presents the community of people whose lives revolve around their regional mall.

The most important events in the movies' protagonists' lives take place in the

mall it is there where they fall in love, break up, meet their idols, find careers.

They seem to waste their lives there in fact, some of them do but it is actually

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the shopping mall which makes and creates their lives. Everybody from the

community seems to either work or hang out in the mall. Some of the characters

depict "ultimate mall-goers", who literally never leave the shopping mall, which

replaces their entire world. The malls, which were originally designed as an

illusion of reality, have become their reality.

Although shopping malls have grown strongly into American landscape

and culture, nowadays some predict their decline or even doom. The reason for

this is the development of on-line shopping, the boom for which began in the late

1990's. The possibility of buying goods without having to leave home and

browsing through hundreds of items you do not really need seems alluring to

many present-day mall goers, who might decide to enter virtual stores rather than

the real ones. But is it really possible for the regional shopping malls to give in to

the on-line stores? "E-tailing", as opposed to retailing, seems to have all the

advantages it is fast and convenient, often cheaper, as the sellers do not have

to pay rents for physical locations and salaries to clerks. The success of on-line

stores, such as Amazon.com, seems to forecast the fall of the malls. On the

other hand, there is one extremely important advantage of bricks-and-mortar

shopping malls over on-line stores, namely their social function. Internet

shopping is practical, and practical only, whereas "real" shopping is apsychological and sociological experience. Human interaction, the event of going

out and socializing is often more pleasurable and gratifying than the simple

pleasure of making a purchase. Furthermore, shopping centers provide their

visitors with "shoptainment", when shopping becomes secondary to other

attractions that one may enjoy in the mall. Buying without leaving one's home

does not satisfy the shoppers' psychological needs. The mall indeed shapes, or

at least is the venue for shaping, people's social identities. The dwellers of

suburbs are driven to the regional malls by their herd instinct; since they live in

houses relatively separated from one another, mostly in small families, far from

the busy and crowded city centers, they often feel alone, which naturally is

neither normal nor healthy for a human being. And, as it was already stated in

this paper, the mall is very often the only convenient place for people to gather.

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Sometimes, shopping is only an excuse to blend in with the crowd and fight

against one's own loneliness.

To conclude, regional shopping centers were not only shaped by the

needs and desires of middle class, suburban shoppers they have also grown to

become the agents of shaping those shoppers' identities. Shopping malls, which

were originally bred by commercialism and designed for the simple purpose of

selling goods and making money, turned out to be something more for local

communities. The "shoppers" form a community, since the mall is often the only

place in their neighborhood where they can meet and socialize comfortably,

since it offers all the attraction, that an entire little town could offer but under

one rooftop. Shopping malls have established their position in the map of the

cultural life of suburban America, and even the most cutting-edge developments

in modern technology in the form of, for example, on-line shopping are not

likely to change it. After all, participating in the life of the community and

socializing with other people are some of the basic human needs; the kind of

needs that the experience provided by the shopping mall can satisfy.

Bibliography:

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1. Gibian, Peter. "The Art of Being Off-Center: Shopping Center Spaces and

Spectacles". Maasik, Sonia and Solomon, Jack. Signs of Life: Readings of

Popular Culture fro Writers. Boston, St. Martin's Press, 1994.

2. Gruen, Victor. The Heart of Our Cities. New York, Simon and Schuster Inc.,

1964. Pp. 186-191.

3. Dodge, Martin. "Geographies of E-Commerce: The Case of Amazon.com".

Graham, Stephen. The Cybercities Reader. London, Routledge, 2004.

4. Zulin, Sharon. The Cultures of Cities. Chapter 6: "While the city shops".

Massachusets, Blackwell Publ., 1995.

5. Smith, Kevin, dir. .Mallrats. Perf. Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Shannon Doherty.

Written by: Smith, Kevin. Gramercy Pictures, 1995.

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