Forerunners to the shopping mall in London, with shop fronts inside (pictured), opened in 1819 interior in Milan which opened in 1877 Shopping centers in general may have their origins in public markets and, in the Middle East, covered
bazaars. In 1798, the first covered shopping passage was built in Paris, the
Passage du Caire. In London, the
Royal Opera Arcade opened in 1816, and the more famous
Burlington Arcade opened in 1819. Western European cities in particular built many arcade-style shopping centers.
The Arcade in
Providence, Rhode Island, built in 1828, claims to be the first shopping arcade in the United States. The
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, which opened in 1877, was larger than its predecessors, and inspired the use of the term "galleria" for many other shopping arcades and malls. In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the
suburb and
automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping center was created away from
downtowns. Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include
Market Square,
Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and
Country Club Plaza,
Kansas City, Missouri (1924). The suburban shopping center concept evolved further in the United States after
World War II, with larger open-air shopping centers anchored by major department stores, such as the
Broadway-Crenshaw Center in
Los Angeles, built in 1947 and anchored by a five-story
Broadway and a
May Company California.
Downtown pedestrian malls and use of term mall In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the term "shopping mall" was first used, but in the original sense of the word "mall", meaning a pedestrian promenade in the U.S., or in U.K. usage, a "shopping precinct". Early downtown pedestrianized malls included the
Kalamazoo Mall (the first, in 1959), "Shoppers' See-Way" in
Toledo,
Lincoln Road Mall in
Miami Beach,
Santa Monica Mall (1965). Although
Bergen Mall opened in 1957 using the name "mall" and inspired other suburban shopping centers to rebrand themselves as malls, these types of properties were still referred to as "shopping centers" until the late 1960s.
Enclosed malls , built in 1955 and one of the first enclosed malls in the world, in
Luleå, Sweden The enclosed shopping center, which would eventually be known as the shopping mall, did not appear in mainstream until the mid-1950s. One of the earliest examples was the
Valley Fair Shopping Center in
Appleton, Wisconsin, which opened on 10 March 1955. Valley Fair featured a number of modern features including central heating and cooling, a large outdoor parking area, semi-detached anchor stores, and restaurants. Later that year the world's first fully enclosed shopping mall was opened in
Luleå, in northern Sweden (architect:
Ralph Erskine) and was named
Shopping; the region now claims the highest shopping center density in Europe. The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant
Victor Gruen. This new generation of regional-size shopping centers began with the Gruen-designed
Southdale Center, which opened in the
Twin Cities suburb of
Edina, Minnesota, United States in October 1956. The first retail complex to be promoted as a "mall" was
Paramus,
New Jersey's
Bergen Mall, which opened with an open-air format on 14 November 1957, and was later enclosed in 1973. Aside from
Southdale Center, significant early enclosed shopping malls were
Harundale Mall (1958) in
Glen Burnie,
Maryland,
Big Town Mall (1959) in
Mesquite,
Texas,
Chris-Town Mall (1961) in
Phoenix,
Arizona, and
Randhurst Center (1962) in
Mount Prospect,
Illinois. Other early malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtowns into the largely residential suburbs. This formula (enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became a popular way to build retail across the world. Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl. Even though malls mostly appeared in suburban areas in the U.S., some U.S. cities facilitated the construction of enclosed malls downtown as an effort to revive city centers and allow them to compete effectively with suburban malls. Examples included
Main Place Mall in Buffalo (1969) and The Gallery (1977, now
Fashion District Philadelphia) in Philadelphia. Other cities created open-air
pedestrian malls. In the United States, developers such as
A. Alfred Taubman of
Taubman Centers extended the concept further in 1980, with
terrazzo tiles at the
Mall at Short Hills in
New Jersey, indoor fountains, and two levels allowing a shopper to make a circuit of all the stores. Taubman believed carpeting increased friction, slowing down customers, so it was removed. Fading daylight through glass panels was supplemented by gradually increased electric lighting, making it seem like the afternoon was lasting longer, which encouraged shoppers to linger.
Decline of shopping malls in the United States , United States In the United States, in the mid-1990s, malls were still being constructed at a rate of 140 a year. But in 2001, a
PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that underperforming and vacant malls, known as "greyfield" and "dead mall" estates, were an emerging problem. In 2007, a year before the
Great Recession, no new malls were built in America, for the first time in 50 years.
City Creek Center Mall in
Salt Lake City, which opened in March 2012, was the first to be built since the recession. Another issue was that the growth-crazed American commercial real estate industry had simply built too many nice places to shop—far more than could be reasonably justified by the actual growth of the American population, retail sales, or any other economic indicator. The number of American shopping centers exploded from 4,500 in 1960 to 70,000 by 1986 to just under 108,000 by 2010. Thus, the number of dead malls increased significantly in the early 21st century. The economic health of malls across the United States has been in decline, as revealed by high vacancy rates. From 2006 to 2010, the percentage of malls that are considered to be "dying" by real estate experts (have a vacancy rate of at least 40%), unhealthy (20–40%), or in trouble (10–20%) all increased greatly, and these high vacancy rates only partially decreased from 2010 to 2014. In 2014, nearly 3% of all malls in the United States were considered to be "dying" (40% or higher vacancy rates) and nearly one-fifth of all malls had vacancy rates considered "troubling" (10% or higher). Some real estate experts say the "fundamental problem" is a glut of malls in many parts of the country creating a market that is "extremely over-retailed". By the time shopping mall operator
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield decided to exit the American market in 2022, the United States had an average of 24.5 square feet of retail space per capita (in contrast to 4.5 square feet per capita in Europe). In 2019,
The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards opened as an upscale mall in New York City with "a '
Fifth Avenue' mix of shops", such as
H&M,
Zara, and
Sephora below them. This is one of the first two malls built recently, along with
American Dream in which both opened in 2019 since
City Creek Center. Online shopping has also emerged as a major competitor to shopping malls. In the
United States, online shopping has accounted for an increasing share of total retail sales. In 2013, roughly 200 out of 1,300 malls across the United States were going out of business. To combat this trend, developers have converted malls into other uses including attractions such as parks, movie theaters, gyms, and even fishing lakes. In the United States, the 600,000 square foot
Highland Mall will be a campus for
Austin Community College. The Australian mall company
Westfield launched an online mall (and later a mobile app) with 150 stores, 3,000 brands and over 1 million products. The
COVID-19 pandemic also significantly impacted the retail industry. Government regulations temporarily closed malls, increased entrance controls, and imposed strict public sanitation requirements. ==Design==