Posted by Richard Haut on January 28, 2002 at 09:24:03:In Reply to: Re: What's a very nice mall or shopping center in the world or in America? posted by Paul Malo on January 28, 2002 at 08:13:44:
The Galleria in Milan - if you gotta go shopping, you gotta go.One thing puzzles me about the modern concept of a shopping centre (mall). They are designed increasingly for growing retail markets only.
A downturn in the retail trade, the failure or withdrawal of one anchor-tenant, and the whole centre can fail. A main closed off section, a decrease in the number of people, and the centre can take on an air of misery and cease to be a focus for destination shopping. This does not require large numbers of units to be empty, but a comparatively small downturn.
In a traditional shopping area, as existed in older towns in Britain, the combination of a few larger shops or supermarkets was combined with smaller shops, other services and facilities and, very frequently, a street-market.
The hold - or death-grip - that the big retail chains have on the British retail industry indicate that a downturn could become a slide, with shopping centres losing trade and being unable to stop the trend.
This is not a "doom-and-gloom" prediction of long-term recession, but something which can be caused by a fairly brief drop in trade. Do the centres close if this happens ? Not in my experience - they attract hippy type markets paying minimal rents and selling odd bits and pieces, giving them an oddity value. This happened to a number of centres during the recession of ten years ago.
It is perhaps worth considering whether greater efforts should be put into returning to the liveliness of traditional town-centre shopping areas, rather than the captive-shopper principle of the big malls.
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