Mall facts
ALL UNDER ONE ROOF: A shopping mall in Gurgaon in Haryana.
SHOPPING MALL is essentially an American concept. A "shopping mall" can be defined as "a mercantile establishment consisting of a carefully landscaped complex of shops representing leading merchandisers." It can also be a "shopping centre with stores and businesses facing a system of enclosed walkways for pedestrians." The shopping centre, or shopping mall, or shopping plaza, is the modern adaptation of the historical marketplace. A collection of independent retail stores, services and a parking area, which is conceived, constructed and maintained by a separate management firm as a unit.
It may also contain restaurants, banks, theatres, professional offices, service stations, etc. The first shopping mall in the U.S. was the Country Club Plaza, set up by the J.C. Nichols Company near Kansas City, Missouri, in 1922. The first enclosed mall called Southdale opened in Edina, Minnesota in 1956. Giant mega-malls were developed in the 1980s.
The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, opened in 1981, with more than 800 stores and a hotel, amusement park, miniature golf course, church, water-park for sunbathing and surfing, a zoo and a 438- feet-long lake.
Interestingly, in the U.S., the birthplace of the shopping mall, many of these commercial centres are doomed to extinction. There is even a website, http://www.deadmalls.com/ that keeps track of these disappearing malls and the attempts to rejuvenate them. In the Gulf countries, the shopping malls took on the new name of "Souk." Traditionally, the "Souk" is a commercial quarter in an Arab city. It was also an open-air market, even though on many occasions, it was also covered. The Souk has played in an important role in the history of the Arab countries.
However, the concept of indoor shopping is not that new. The Grand Bazaar of Isfahan, an ancient city in Iran, dates back to the 10th century. It is a largely covered space. In London also, the Burlington Arcade was opened in 1819. A new form of mall located away from the city centres, developed in the U.S. in the late 20th century as the suburban and automobile culture rose.
R.R.
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