Shopping center

Bailian Xijiao Shopping Mall in Shanghai, at 109,000 square metres (1,170,000 sq ft)[16] a super-regional shopping mall[14]

A superregional-scale center is commonly called a city centre. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers it is over 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m²) of gross leasable area. These have three or more anchors, mass and varied merchant trade and serves as the dominant venue for the region (25 miles or 40 km) in which it is located.[17]

Note that ICSC defines indoor centers above 800,000 square feet (74,000 m²) net leasable area in Asia-Pacific as mega-malls.[14]

A regional-scale shopping center (commonly known as a town center) is typically larger 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 and offers a wider selection of stores. Given their wider service area, these tend to have higher-end stores (department stores) that need a larger area in order for their services to be profitable. Regional centers are have tourist attractions, education and hospitality areas.[17]

Indoor centers are commonly called Shopping Malls in the U.S. or Shopping Centres in Commonwealth English.

A community shopping center in Klaukkala, Uusimaa, Finland

Community-scale shopping centers are commonly called Main Streets, High Streets or town squares in wider centres or in English-speaking Europe as retail parks for certain centres. These offer a wider range of goods and has two anchor supermarkets or discount department stores. They may also follow a parallel configuration, or may be L- or U-shaped. Community centers usually feature a retail area of 100,000 to 350,000 square feet (9,300 to 32,500 m²) and serve a primary area of 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 km).[7][11]

A neighborhood shopping center catering to Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon, Philadelphia

Local-scale shopping centers usually have a retail area of 30,000 to 150,000 square feet (2,800 to 13,900 m²), and serve a primary area in a 3-mile (5 km) radius. They typically have a supermarket as an anchor or a large convenience store and commonly serve large villages or as secondary centers to towns.[7]

Car-dependent centers in the U.K. and Europe, if larger than 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) can be termed a small retail park while in the U.S. and other countries it is neighborhood shopping center.[11]

A strip mall in Cornelius, Oregon

Convenience-scale centers, independent of other centers are known as strip malls or as shopping parades. These centers are less than 30,000 square feet (2,800 m²) of gross leasable space and commonly serve villages or as parts of larger centers commonly called small squares, plazas or indoor markets. They are also called strip centers or convenience centers. [7] Strip Malls, despite the name, are not considered "malls" in North America.

Power centers, in North America, are open-air single-level shopping centers that almost exclusively feature several big-box retailers as their anchors (although newer urban power centers have adopted enclosed and/or vertical formats while retaining the strong big-box emphasis). They usually have a retail area of 250,000 to 600,000 square feet (23,000 to 56,000 m²) and a primary trade area of 5 to 10 miles (8 to 16 km).[7]

A retail park, in the United Kingdom and Europe, is a type of shopping centre found on the fringes of most large towns and cities in the United Kingdom, and some (but not all) other European countries. In Europe, any shopping center with mostly "retail warehouse units" (UK terminology; in the US the term is "big-box stores"/superstores), 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) or larger is a retail park, according to the leading real estate company Cushman & Wakefield.[11] This would be considered in North America either a power center or a neighborhood shopping center, depending on the size.

Lifestyle center located in Woodbury, Minnesota

A lifestyle center (American English), or lifestyle centre (Commonwealth English), is a shopping center or mixed-used commercial development that combines the traditional retail functions of a shopping mall with leisure amenities oriented towards upscale consumers.[18]

Terminal 21, a 40,000-square-metre (430,000 sq ft)[19] shopping center in Bangkok. Each floor has a theme of a different major world city.

Theme or festival centers have distinct unifying themes that are followed by their individual shops as well as their architecture. They are usually located in urban areas and cater to tourists. They typically feature a retail area of 80,000 to 250,000 square feet (7,400 to 23,200 m²).[7]

An outlet center (or outlet mall in North America) is a type of shopping center in which manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Other stores in outlet centers are operated by retailers selling returned goods and discontinued products, often at heavily reduced prices. Outlet stores were found as early as 1936, but the first multi-store outlet center, Vanity Fair, located in Reading, Pennsylvania, did not open until 1974. Belz Enterprises opened the first enclosed factory outlet center in 1979, in Lakeland, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis.[20]

A pedestrian area in Kontula, Helsinki, Finland

A shopping precinct (U.K. term) or pedestrian mall (U.S. term) is an area of city center streets which have been pedestrianized, where there is a concentration of "high street shops" such as department stores, clothing and home furnishings stores, and so forth.[9] They may be part of a larger city-center pedestrian zone, as is Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the U.S. chiefly in the 1960s, some cities converted a main shopping street (usually several blocks of one street only) to pedestrian zones known at the time as shopping malls (i.e. the original meaning of "mall": a "promenade"), but now referred to as pedestrian malls.

Cleveland Arcade in Cleveland, Ohio

A shopping arcade is a type of shopping precinct that developed earlier and in which the connecting walkways are not owned by a single proprietor and may be in the open air or covered by a ground-floor loggia. Many early shopping arcades such as the Burlington Arcade in London, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, and numerous arcades in Paris are famous and still functioning as shopping centers, while many others have been demolished.

In Russia, centuries-old shopping centers the size of regional malls still operate, consisting of multiple arcades. They developed from previous so-called "trading rows", which were essentially markets where traders could obtain space to sell their goods. Great Gostiny Dvor in Saint Petersburg in its present buildings dates back to the 1760s.[21] With a total area of 800,000 square feet (74,000 m²),[22] GUM in Moscow, opened in its present buildings in the 1890s.[23]

The Stadsfeestzaal^(nl), an exhibition palace-turned-shopping center in Antwerp, Belgium

Historic and/or monumental buildings are sometimes converted into shopping centers, often forming part of a larger city center shopping district that otherwise consists mostly of on-street stores. Examples are the former main post office of Amsterdam, now Magna Plaza; the Stadsfeestzaal in Antwerp, Belgium, a former exhibition "palace"; the former Sears warehouse, now Ponce City Market in Atlanta; the former Emporium-Capwell department store in San Francisco, now San Francisco Centre; Georgetown Park in Washington, D.C., and the Abasto de Buenos Aires, formerly the city's wholesale produce market.

Notes: *based on current ICSC shopping center type definitions, **center opened in 1926 without department store, which was added in 1930

Shops at Country Club Plaza, opened 1923, one of the first planned shopping centers

Early examples of "stores under one roof" include the nine-building shopping arcade Dayton Arcade in Dayton, Ohio (1902–1904), primarily built to rehouse the public food markets in more sanitary conditions, but which added retail clothing and household goods stores.[31] The Lake View Store, opened July 1916, was a collection of stores under one roof aimed at the workers in the company town of Morgan Park, in Duluth, Minnesota.

Before the 1920s–1930s, the term "shopping center" in the U.S. was loosely applies to a collection of retail businesses. A city's Downtown might be called a "shopping center". By the 1940s, "shopping center" implied — if not always a single owner — at least, comprehensive planning in the design and business plan, a place built according to an overall program that covered the target market, types of stores and store mix, signs, exterior lighting, and parking.[32]

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 downtown.[33] Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square, Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri , 55 acres (220,000 m²), opened 1923.[34]

The Bank Block in Grandview Heights, Ohio (1928) was an early strip mall or neighborhood center of 30 shops built along Grandview Avenue, with parking in the back for 400 cars. Uniquely for the time, it had multiple national grocery store tenants Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, and the A&P Tea Company.[35] The Park and Shop (1930) in Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C. was an early strip mall or neighborhood center with parking in the front. It was anchored by Piggly Wiggly and built in an L shape.[36]

Other notable, large early centers with strips of independent stores, adjacent parking lots, but no department store anchors, include Highland Park Village (1931) in Dallas; and River Oaks Shopping Center (1937) in Houston.

Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach, opened 1965, lined with shops, outdoor restaurant seating, fountains and sculptures

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), and malls in Fort Worth and in Canada's capital, Ottawa.[37][38][39] The downtown Urbana, Illinois mall, converted from a city street, was enclosed, designed by Victor Gruen.[40]

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.[4]

The term "mall" for regional enclosed shopping centers is not used in the U.K.[41]

The term "mall" is, however, used for those types of centers in some markets beyond North America such as India[42] and the United Arab Emirates.[43] In other developing countries such as Namibia and Zambia, "Mall" is found in the names of many small centers that qualify as neighborhood shopping centers or strip malls according to the ICSC.[44]

The suburban shopping center concept evolved further with larger open-air shopping centers anchored by major department stores. The first was a center in Ardmore, Pennsylvania later named Suburban Square, when the Philadelphia department store Strawbridge & Clothier opened a four-story, 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m²)[45] branch there on May 12, 1930.[46][47] A much larger example would be 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.[48]

Two of the largest shopping centers at the time were both in the San Fernando Valley, a suburban area of Los Angeles. They each consisted of one core open-air center and surrounding retail properties with various other owners, which would later hasten their decline as there wasn't a single owner, but rather a merchants' association, which was unable to react quickly to competition in later decades.[49] Valley Plaza opened August 12, 1951. In the mid-1950s, it claimed to be the largest shopping center on the West Coast of the United States and the third-largest in the country.[50] The first part of the Panorama City Shopping Center opened as on October 10, 1955,[51] and would grow until the mid-1960s, it claimed to be the first shopping center with four major department store anchors,[52] even though the "center" was in fact a marketing association for multiple adjacent properties.

Northland Center near Detroit, built 1954, was the first of 4 centers that Victor Gruen built for Hudson's (Eastland Center, Southland Center, and Westland Center were the others) At launch, Northland Center was the world's largest shopping center.[53]

The enclosed shopping mall did not appear until the mid-1950s. One of the earliest examples was the Valley Fair Shopping Center in Appleton, Wisconsin,[54] 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.[55]

The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen.[56][57][58] 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.[57][58] 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. 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.[59]

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,[60] 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.[61][62]

Over the next five decades, the United States embarked on a wild shopping center construction spree. American commercial real estate developers built far more shopping centers and malls than could be justified by the country's population, retail sales, or any other economic indicator. The number of American shopping centers exploded from 4,500 in 1960 to 70,000 by 1986 to just under 108,000 by 2010.[63] By the time shopping mall operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield decided to get out of the United States in 2022, the United States had an average of 24.5 square feet of retail space per capita (in contrast to 4.5 square feet per capita in Europe).[64]

Since the 1990s, the shopping mall has been in decline because of competition from discount stores and other shopping center formats, from e-commerce and most recently from closures and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Don Mills Convenience Centre (now Shops at Don Mills) opened in 1955, in Toronto, Ontario. The first fully enclosed shopping mall in Canada was Wellington Square. It was designed for Eaton's by John Graham, Jr. as an enclosed mall with a department store anchor and subterranean parking which opened in downtown London, Ontario, on August 11, 1960. After several renovations, it remains open today as Citi Plaza.[65]

In the 1970s in Canada, the Ontario government created the Ontario Downtown Renewal Programme, which helped finance the building of several downtown malls across Ontario such as Eaton Centre. The program was created to reverse the tide of small business leaving downtowns for larger sites surrounding the city. In the first quarter of 2012 shopping mall private investment hit an all-time low under 0.1 percent.[66]

In the UK, Chrisp Street Market was the first pedestrian shopping area built with a road at the shop fronts. The first mall-type shopping precinct in Great Britain was built in the downtown area of Birmingham. Known as Bull Ring Centre (now Bull Ring, Birmingham), it was officially dedicated in May 1964. A notable example is the Halton Lea Shopping Centre (originally known as Shopping City) in Runcorn, which opened in 1972 and was conceived as the center point for the new town's development. Another early example is the Brent Cross Centre, Britain's first out-of-town shopping mall and located on the northern outskirts of London, which was opened in March 1976.

Chermside Drive-In Shopping Centre started trading to the public in 1957, in Brisbane, Australia.