Part memoir and part study of modern life, Shopping Mall examines the modern mythology of the shopping mall and the place it holds in our shared cultural history.
While becoming less relevant in the United States, shopping malls are booming throughout urban Latin America. But what does this mean on the ground? Are shopping malls a sign of the region’s “coming of age”? El Mall is the first book to answer these questions and explore how malls and consumption are shaping the conversation about class and social inequality in Latin America. Through original and insightful ethnography, Dávila shows that class in the neoliberal city is increasingly defined by the shopping habits of ordinary people. Moving from the global operations of the shopping mall industry to the experience of shopping in places like Bogotá, Colombia, El Mall is an indispensable book for scholars and students interested in consumerism and neoliberal politics in Latin America and the world.
In this eBook you will find all information about Shopping Malls in the USA / United States of America. The mall shopping center is an interesting place. It is of course not just a place to go shopping, but it has become a multi-purpose place. Normally, people used to go shopping in downtown areas of cities and go there for other activities as well, but they now go to the mall. It has become a fixture of modern life, one of those things that we can't imagine doing without. For a relatively modern development, the mall shopping center has been a successful idea that has made fortunes for developers, investors, and retailers. What it has done for the average person is another story, but its importance in everyday life is huge, and the influence of the mall is everywhere. It seems like the primary function of a mall these days is a social space, a place for people of all ages to meet up, eat, talk, and generally hang out together. For young people, it's the only place to get together and socialize. For others, the shopping center is a place to walk (mall walking is an established practice for older folks) and meet friends, but they have other social spaces like the church, the community center, and so on. But for the young crowd, it's the mall or stay at home.
Christian historian Sidney Mead has observed: In America space has played the part that time has played in older cultures of the world. In Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, Jon Pahl examines this provocative statement in conversation with what he calls the spatial character of American theology. He argues that places are always imaginatively constructed by the human beings who inhabit them. Sometimes this spatial theology works to our benefit; other times it poses spiritual risks. What happens when our banal clothing of the sacred violates our genuine need for comfort and intimacy? Or when we remember that the fleeting pleasures of a shopping trip or a Disneyland escape are designed to fill someone else's pocket rather than the spiritual emptiness in our own hearts? Pahl develops several ways to clothe the divine from within the Christian tradition. He introduces a theology of place that reveals aspects of God's character through biblical metaphors drawn from physical spaces, such as the true vine, the rock, and the living water. Accessible and thought provoking, this enlightening book provides a better grasp of our particularly American way of lending religious significance to spaces of all kinds.
Downtown Brooklyn's Fulton Mall is one of the most bustling public spaces in New York City. A colossus of commerce, itwelcomes over one hundred thousand shoppers daily and ranks among the most profitable commercial real estate in the entire country, and is also home to some of the city's most recognized institutions, including cheesecake mecca Junior's, that have been immortalized in song, film, and culture. Despite its historic link to Brooklyn's past and its financial success as a shopping district, Fulton Street is rarely celebrated in New York. The street's hand-painted signs, customized jewelry, rare sneakers, mega-church, and vendors offer a special sampling of noncorporate commerce, but many consider its sensorial and physical density a sign of blight. Misunderstandings about race, class, and profitability have led Fulton Street to be characterized as run-down, dangerous, or underutilized, and as a result it has been subject to nearly continuous renovation. Recently rezoned and becoming increasingly attractive to national chain stores, Fulton Street is once again poised for big changes. Street Value is a challenge to creatively rethink the planning and urban design of Fulton Street and other urban shopping districts. Street Value explores the mall's historical and contemporary conditions through original essays, oral histories, new and archival photographs, historic documents, and interviews with key planners, developers, city officials, historians, and activists from the 1960s to the present. Street Value probes the ideology of redevelopment and demonstrates how commercial, governmental, and activist forces have coalesced to produce one of Brooklyn's most legendary public spaces.
Creating an appealing overall look as well as a distinctive image for each shop...integrating communal areas...handling parking and public facilities...these are just some of the challenges facing the designers of modern shopping malls. "Shop and Malls" features dozens of remarkable examples of successful malls, each one showcased with floor plans, insightful text, sketches, and full-color photographs that show how the designers met the retail challenge. "Shop and Malls" is a one-stop shopping resource for design professionals, architects, and urban planners.