Shopping mall (original) (raw)

A shopping mall is a building or set of buildings that contain stores and have interconnecting walkways that make it easy for people to walk from store to store. The walkways may or may not be enclosed. In the United Kingdom these are called "shopping centres".

A strip mall is a type of shopping mall where the stores are arranged in a row, with a sidewalk in front. Strip malls are typically developed as a unit and have large parking lots in front. In the United Kingdom these are called "out of town shopping centres", even though they might not be out of town.

History

The first enclosed shopping mall ever built was the Galleria Victor Emmanuel in Milan. Many other large cities created similar malls in the late 19th century and early 20th century along similar lines.

In the late 20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new form of mall was created away from city centers. The design is modeled after small town Main streets in the USA, but placed entirely indoors. This new generation of mall was pioneered by Southdale, located in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minnesota.

A large shopping mall is sometimes called a megamall. The three largest enclosed shopping malls are the Mall of Arabia inside Dubai Land in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and the Mall of America in another Twin Cities suburb, Bloomington, Minnesota, USA. However, the world's largest shopping complex at one discrete location is the two-mall agglomeration in the Philadelphia suburb of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Mall can refer to a shopping mall, which is a place where a collection of shops all adjoin a pedestrian area, or exclusively pedestrian street, that allows shoppers to walk separately and isolated from vehicle traffic. Mall is generally used in North America and Australasia to refer to large shopping areas, while the term Arcade is more often used, especially in Britain, to refer to a narrow pedestrian only street, often covered or between closely spaced buildings.

List of shopping malls

Austria

Canada

India

Italy

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United States

See also