Shopping center
A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in Commonwealth English, shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza, or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof.
The first known collections of retailers under one roof are public markets, dating back to ancient times, and Middle Eastern covered markets, bazaars and souqs. In Paris, about 150 covered passages were built between the late 18th century and 1850, and a wealth of shopping arcades were built across Europe in the 19th century. In the United States, the widespread use of the automobile in the 1920s led to the first shopping centers consisting of a few dozen shops that included parking for cars. Starting in 1946, larger, open air centers anchored by department stores were built, and then enclosed shopping malls starting with Victor Gruen's Southdale Center near Minneapolis in 1956.
A shopping mall is a type of shopping center, a North American term originally meaning a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s began to be used as a generic term for large shopping centers anchored by department stores, especially enclosed centers. Many malls in the United States are currently in severe decline or have closed. Successful exceptions have added entertainment and experiential features, added big-box stores as anchor tenants, or are specialized formats: power centers, lifestyle centers, factory outlet centers, and festival marketplaces. Smaller types of shopping centers in North America include neighborhood shopping centers, and even smaller, strip malls. Pedestrian malls in the United States have been less common and less successful than in Europe. In Canada, underground passages in Montreal and Toronto link large adjacent downtown retail spaces.
In Europe shopping malls/centers continue to grow and thrive. In the region distinction is made between shopping centers, shopping precincts, the High Street, and retail parks.
Types
Most English-speakers follow a mix of the United Kingdom's and United States's naming conventions.In the U.K. a "centre for shopping" is commonly the centre for a settlement. More recent shopping dedicated areas outside the main centre are known as "shopping centres" "shopping villages" or "retail parks".
According to author Richard Longstreth, before the 1920s–1930s, the term "shopping center" in the U.S. was loosely applied to any group of adjacent retail businesses. A city's downtown might be called a "shopping center". By the 1940s, the term "shopping center" implied — if not always a single owner — at least, a place sharing comprehensive design planning, including layout, signs, exterior lighting, and parking; and shared business planning that covered the target market, types of stores and store mix.
The International Council of Shopping Centers classifies Asia-Pacific, European, U.S., and Canadian shopping centers into the following types:
Abbreviations: SC=shopping center/centre, GLA = Gross Leasable Area, NLA = Net Leasable Area, AP=Asia-Pacific, EU=Europe, Can=Canada, US=United States of America
*does not apply to Europe
General-purpose
Multiregional
A superregional-scale center is commonly called a city centre. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers it is over of gross leasable area. These have three or more anchors, mass and varied merchant trade and serves as the dominant venue for the region in which it is located.Note that ICSC defines indoor centers above net leasable area in Asia-Pacific as mega-malls.
Regional
A regional-scale shopping centre is typically larger with to 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 that need a larger area in order for their services to be profitable. Regional centres have tourist attractions, education and hospitality areas.Indoor centres are commonly called Shopping Malls in the U.S. or Shopping Centres in Commonwealth English.
Community
Community-scale shopping centres 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 and serve a primary area of.Local
Local-scale shopping centres usually have a retail area of, and serve a primary area in a radius. They typically have a supermarket as an anchor or a large convenience shop and commonly serve large villages or as secondary centres to towns.Car-dependent centres in the U.K. and Europe, if larger than can be termed a small retail park, while in the U.S. and some other countries it is known as a neighborhood shopping center.
Convenience
Convenience-scale centers, independent of other centers are known as strip malls or as shopping parades. These centers are less than 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. Strip Malls, despite the name, are not considered "malls" in North America.Sector-focused
Power centers and retail parks
, in North America, are open-air single-level shopping centers that almost exclusively feature several big-box retailers as their anchors. They usually have a retail area of and a primary trade area of.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 other European countries. In Europe, any shopping center with mostly "retail warehouse units", or larger is a retail park, according to the leading real estate company Cushman & Wakefield. This would be considered in North America either a power center or a neighborhood shopping center, depending on the size.
Lifestyle center
A lifestyle center, or lifestyle centre, 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.Theme/festival center
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.Outlet centre
An outlet centre is a type of shopping centre in which manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Other stores in outlet centres 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 centre, 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.Shopping precinct / Pedestrian mall
A shopping precinct or pedestrian mall is an area of city centre 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. They may be part of a larger city-centre pedestrian zone, as is Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the U.S. chiefly in the 1960s, some cities converted a main shopping street to pedestrian zones known at the time as shopping malls, but now referred to as pedestrian malls.Shopping arcade
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 centres, while many others have been demolished.In Russia, centuries-old shopping centres 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. With a total area of, GUM in Moscow, opened in its present buildings in the 1890s.
In historical buildings
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 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.History
Shopping centers are not a recent innovation. One of the earliest examples of public shopping areas comes from ancient Rome, in forums where shopping markets were located. One of the earliest public shopping centers is Trajan's Market in Rome located in Trajan's Forum. Trajan's Market was probably built around 100–110 AD by Apollodorus of Damascus, and it is thought to be the world's oldest shopping center. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul was built in the 15th century and is still one of the largest covered shopping centers in the world, with more than 58 streets and 4,000 shops. Numerous other covered shopping arcades, such as the 19th-century Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Damascus, Syria, might also be considered as precursors to the present-day large shopping centers. Isfahan's Grand Bazaar, which is largely covered, dates from the 10th century. The 10-kilometer-long, covered Tehran's Grand Bazaar also has a lengthy history. The oldest continuously occupied shopping mall in the world is likely to be the Chester Rows. Dating back at least to the 13th century, these covered walkways housed shops, with storage and accommodation for traders on various levels. Different rows specialized in different goods, such as 'Bakers Row' or 'Fleshmongers Row'.Gostiny Dvor in St. Petersburg, which opened in 1785, may be regarded as one of the first purposely-built mall-type shopping complexes, as it consisted of more than 100 shops covering an area of over.
The Marché des Enfants Rouges in Paris opened in 1628 and still runs today. The Oxford Covered Market in Oxford, England opened in 1774 and still runs today.
The Passage du Caire was opened in Paris in 1798. The Burlington Arcade in London was opened in 1819.
The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island introduced the retail arcade concept to the United States in 1828 and is arguably the oldest "shopping center" in the country. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy followed in the 1870s and is closer to large modern malls in spaciousness. Other large cities created arcades and shopping centers in the late 19th century and early 20th century, including the Cleveland Arcade, and Moscow's GUM, which opened in 1890. When the Cleveland Arcade opened in 1890, it was among the first indoor shopping arcades in the US, and like its European counterparts, was an architectural triumph. Two sides of the arcade had 1,600 panes of glass set in iron framing and is a prime example of Victorian architecture. Sydney's Queen Victoria Markets Building, opened in 1898, was also an ambitious architectural project.
Shopping Centers built before the 20th century;