It was 1943 when Austrian architect Victor Gruen invented the first modern shopping mall, a model destined to spread throughout the world. The idea was to make shopping more inviting than ever: stores grouped together in a single, modest building; ample parking; loading and unloading areas concealed by screen walls; inside, a tranquil green area; and services of every kind: shops, bookstores, a cinema or theater, playrooms, auditoriums and arcades, beauticians and hairdressers, even post offices and doctors' offices.
Yet, just a few decades later, Gruen himself believed that a tragic decline in quality was occurring due to a change in the motivations of the builders, guilty of having forgotten the environmental and humanistic ideas underlying the original project and emphasized only the profit-generating features.
In other words, we can say that the idea of serving the needs of a certain neighborhood was supplanted by that of building enormous and powerful commercial machines , which could be placed anywhere: a logic that considers the territory, despite the environmental, historical, cultural and identity values present, always and in any case buildable.
The shopping centre in the 70s
In the 1970s, the architect declared that "for Europe, mindlessly copying the American shopping mall was truly catastrophic" (Gruen, 1978). He spoke of a veritable " economic rape " of central areas, which had grown organically over thousands of years and were important expressions of urban form, full of opportunities for genuine communication between people, culture, the arts, and virtue. Shopping malls began to seriously weaken the core of cities and their historic centers, forcing thousands of small shops to close and ending the long tradition of shopping on the corner.
Faced with the growth of these large consumer centers that were planned but not built, or built but turned out to be economic failures, Gruen did not foresee a future, sensing “the unmistakable signs of their fall.”
The shopping center in Europe
Yet, while England, Germany, the Netherlands, and France have implemented measures to block the growth of commercial developments by encouraging small-scale retail trade, in Italy, the creation of new commercial complexes intended to offer an alternative to the city is a process in full swing: for several years, Piedmont has been among the regions with the highest number of projects (both large and small) underway on the outskirts of cities as well as within them, in the beating heart of more or less lively neighborhoods.
First, a mallification —from the English term coined by architectural historian Iain Borden—of our cities (Borden et al., 2001): streets and squares have progressively become commercial zones where accessibility is correlated with the intention to consume and spend, and where it is increasingly difficult to find a place to sit (also thanks to the placement of hostile architecture), despite the fact that they are, in fact, public spaces. Then, a veritable concession of urban spaces dedicated specifically to consumption; areas open to the public, but not publicly owned (Augé, 1996); areas with a thousand potential uses reduced to backdrops for commercial activity.
It is therefore very interesting to analyze the relationships that commercial places establish, in different forms, with the different functions and characteristics of the expansion and organization of the urban spaces in which they are located (Parisini, 2019).
The shopping centre as a regulator of public space
The ways people live within cities are changing, as are buildings, neighborhoods, architectural structures, and neighborhoods. Human impact is transforming the shape of urban space.
While the concept of space is abstract, place "refers at least to an event, a myth, or a story" (Augè, 1996). However, if once the places of aggregation and the search for goods and relationships within urban space were the neighborhood squares and streets, in contemporary society these are being abandoned to crowd shopping malls. Although neighborhoods and neighbourhoods persist as fundamental elements of the urban structure, places of consumption are now part of the collective imagination.
Georg Simmel had already identified non-places as social spaces that mutate in form and function, modeling themselves on the artificial and intellectualized character of metropolises. After him, Marc Augè defined them as anonymous, impersonal, and large-scale spaces, without identity or history, frequented by individuals free from identity and habitual behavior (Augè, 1996).
In this sense, we can understand the shopping mall as a non-place in urban space. Due to their characteristics, non-places bring people together, but do not unite them: people pass through them, but no one lives there; they exist for everyone, but they do not accommodate any organic society. Everything is precisely calculated, and every action is governed by specific methods and regulations. The individuals within them are customers, users who act according to the same code.
The non-places of consumption
As previously mentioned, these are areas open to the public, but not owned by the public. They tend to resemble one another: the layout of the shops, the lighting, the placement of merchandise, the signs and banners all adhere to common marketing principles , aimed at attracting visitors. After all, the consumer society we live in is a type of society that "interviews its members primarily as consumers" (Bauman, 2007).
Despite individual neglect and standardization, non-places are not experienced with boredom or anxiety, but with a positive value: users benefit from the services in shopping centers—where everything is within reach—and they also spend a lot of time there, relaxing, meeting friends or relatives, and enjoying sensory experiences. Furthermore, because they are highly monitored and controlled, these places are perceived as safe, free of danger or conflict, unlike the city's traditional public spaces—squares and streets—where insecurity and fear permeate.
Augè himself admits that many individuals may consider the shopping center not just for shopping, but as a place of frequented social interaction. In this case, the individual perceives the shopping center, part of the collective sphere, as an urban public space (Mitchell, 1995) and assimilates it to the city , losing the possibility of chance encounters, conflicts, comparisons, and chance discoveries related to truly urban spaces (Gazzola & Venturini, 2005).
Here the commercial non-place acquires a social meaning (more correctly definable as the illusion of socialisation) becoming a superplace, generating a sense of belonging, since, as Augè himself wrote (2007), we all inhabit this city-world to some extent.
Superplaces and emotional experiences
The boundary of the superplace is blurred, indistinct, well-established and integrated into the urban fabric of the city in which it is located, and boasts a symbolic connotation. Within it, social distance, indifference, and imitation increase; yet, the urban superplace has a capacity, namely, to catalyze masses and flows; "a capacity that derives from its symbolic power, its economic weight, its role in modern society. But also from its speed of action and adaptation" (Agnoletto et al., 2007).
The growing demand for emotional experiences is met by the shopping centre , which responds with the promise of multi-sensory and emotionally engaging consumption practices, “hybridising retail spaces and those dedicated to leisure time” (Napolitano et al., 2003, p. 51).
Here, the recurring thesis of the privatization of public space comes into play. If the nature of the latter defines the nature of citizenship (Mitchell, 1995, p. 85) and, in fact, constitutes the city, then its loss represents the loss of the idea of the city (Madanipour, 2010).
Of course, we can't ignore the fact that, with the spread of private spaces like shopping malls, collective spaces are also growing; furthermore, the public sphere isn't always expressed in public spaces (think, for example, of virtual spaces).
Exclusion processes
However, it should not be forgotten that the shopping center, while striving to attract the widest possible audience, excludes anyone deemed dangerous or inappropriate, or of a social class or cultural background different from the established target audience. And it does so not only by filtering entrances, but also outside, throughout the entire surrounding area, often featuring hostile architectural elements —uncomfortable benches or large vases of ornamental plants are common—fenced gardens, and video-monitored parking lots. Danger and the unknown are also completely eliminated through the use, both inside and outside, of perfectly smooth flooring that prevents shoppers from having to lower their eyes, allowing them to browse the windows with peace of mind.
This process of excluding dangers and individuals perceived as dangerous—or merely perceived as such—certainly responds to the citizen's demand for safety in urban spaces: the very economic, social, and cultural dynamism of the industrial city—and later the post-industrial city—has allowed individual freedoms and rights to assert themselves, but has also created a widespread sense of insecurity, destructuring community and neighborly relations (Acierno, 2003). And so it is that "it is property that protects" (Castel, 2004, p. 13).
The shopping centre, therefore, is able to produce identities – albeit temporary and inauthentic – since most individuals attribute meaning to it, become attached to it, learn to recognise the spaces, paths and environments (Codeluppi, 2007) and perceive it as safe.
Redevelopment and window dressing
Finally, it is important to remember two processes to which it is connected.
The first is that of redevelopment : shopping centres are frequently used as a lever for the reuse of abandoned, disused or disused urban spaces, and their construction is often accompanied by urban transformations of the surrounding area or the entire neighbourhood. This phenomenon can then evolve into what the English sociologist Ruth Glass defines as gentrification (1964), that is, a complex of structural, urban planning, economic and sociocultural interventions thanks to which entire neighbourhoods and city areas, predominantly inhabited by low-income social classes, are subjected to redevelopment actions with the aim of determining an increase in property values and the consequent expulsion of the original nucleus of inhabitants and their replacement with wealthy classes.
Not all neighborhoods offer the same services and opportunities, and so the creation of a new shopping center can have effects not only on the surrounding urban space, but also on neighboring neighborhoods, altering their mobility and development.
The second is the process that sociologist Vanni Codeluppi defines as window dressing (2007): the window display becomes a predominant element that allows appearance to prevail over being; a transparent barrier capable of attracting and, at the same time, separating.
The shopping center in the pandemic and post-pandemic context
The national lockdown and mandated closures have made the shopping mall model temporarily unviable, while the current ban on gatherings and mandatory social distancing are posing new challenges to its survival.
The decline of places of consumption, although lagging behind the United States, had already been underway for several years; the main cause lies in a "silent transformation" (Jullien, 2010) that occurs automatically without warning, without raising the alarm, and that imposes its outcome only at the end: the inexorable technological advance that makes accessing services and goods—and sometimes even emotions—simpler and faster. Thus, the shopping mall is in crisis, while consumers' choice falls on e-commerce sites, streaming platforms, and food delivery.
However, while it is true that, in this sense, the arrival of Covid-19 merely accelerated a process already underway, it is also true that this occurred extremely quickly and, therefore, had a rather significant impact.
Waivers
Relentlessly forced by the virus, we find ourselves forced—with all the haste necessary—to teach our grandparents how to use social media and video calls, to forgo going out with friends, to keep our distance from our loved ones, to buy online even things we would never have thought of buying, to hand an internet-connected tablet to our children. Likewise, we are willing—and forced—to forgo Sundays spent at the mall , trying, through the many tools available (online shopping, home-delivered food, streaming movies, video game consoles) to replicate the model within our own four walls.
Thus, the mass public that previously gathered in the shopping mall, sharing this place of consumption and the emotional experiences associated with it, is experiencing a further emotional flattening, while that type of spatialized activity is heading for decline.
With shopping malls closed, shopping has effectively become a virtual experience: from January to June 2020, 2 million new online consumers joined, a growth rate that tripled compared to the same period the previous year.
Local neighborhood trade
It should also be remembered that the ban on leaving home and the closure of major consumer centers have allowed the reemergence of neighborhood shops. In the collective imagination, they have long been associated with local communities and their living areas ; beyond providing essential goods to neighborhood residents, small neighborhood businesses also serve a social function, fostering human connections, building trust and mutual support. However, in recent decades, urban transformation has also affected these small spaces, making them increasingly invisible to the eyes of the citizen.
In the midst of the pandemic, neighborhood shops found themselves at the crossroads of two opposing yet interconnected poles: the fear of contagion that forces people to stay indoors and the need for human connection that drives them to seek escape, to physically meet in a specific location. By raising and lowering their shutters, they have been able to adapt to the demands of the numerous Prime Ministerial Decrees, offering, from time to time, home delivery services or product reservations and pickups through websites or apps, creating a " local e-commerce " experience.
Thus, the neighborhood, a neighborhood space that "more than others in recent decades has suffered a severe erosion of public land, collective services, and commercial activities" (Tosi, 2020, p. 4), has witnessed the return of neglected businesses and the reuse of marginal spaces. This phenomenon has been common to several cities, so much so that many have proposed decentralizing services and facilities so that every neighborhood has numerous small meeting points within a quarter of an hour's walk.
If the neighborhood has become the device for consolidating short-term relationships, the web has allowed us to stay in touch with what and who was further away.
Beyond Delivery
Many of the solutions used to address the situation, including those adopted by shopping malls, involve a hybrid of online and offline; think of click-and-collect , delivery , drive-in , or even webrooming (searching for information online and then making a purchase in-store). While the trend toward shopping and entertainment from the comfort of your own home is growing because it's more convenient, faster, and safer, it's also true that—perhaps—we're not yet willing to completely give up the social interaction these activities offer.
But are these changes in ways of gathering, socializing, and consuming spaces permanent? Has the neighborhood blossomed forever, or is this a phase limited to the particular circumstances we find ourselves in? Will the shopping center once again be perceived as a safe, risk-free, and suitable place for entertainment, or, conversely, does this pandemic represent the final blow that will forever erase the retail park formula so beloved by Americans of the past? And, if so, what will be the fate of all those superplaces that required investment and time, but also the sacrifice of so much public space?
Giulia Candida
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