Mitchell Glaser's Remarks
(Written March 2000)
My name is Mitchell Glaser. I am a junior at the University of Southern California, in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development. In the spring semester of my sophomore year, I took one of the required courses in the Planning and Development major, "Design of the Good," with Professor Martin Krieger. As part of this course, each student was to work on a project related to design and tailored to his or her individual interests.
I have been fascinated with all aspects of urban development for as long as I can remember, but shopping centers have always been of particular interest to me. I remember the excitement I felt as a boy growing up in Phoenix whenever my family went to Metrocenter, the largest mall in Arizona. The mammoth building was impressive inside and out, with five department stores, over two hundred smaller stores, restaurants, banks, movie theatres, and an ice rink. Not only was it a major retail development, it was an institution in the Salt River Valley, a social center, a "downtown" in a city that lacked most of the traditional institutions of city life. This mixture of commerce, consumerism, and community fixed the shopping mall in my mind as a unique and essential part of our modern city and our modern society.
So when it came to develop the concept for this design project, I immediately thought to do something involving malls. After some discussion, Professor Krieger and I agreed that a visual documentation project on all of the malls in the Los Angeles area would be interesting and worthwhile. So I set out to catalogue the fifty-seven malls in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, and San Bernardino counties, inside and out, in order to get a clear view of what malls are - how they look, how they operate, and how they interact with nature, the rest of the built environment, and the community. Over the course of eleven days in the months of February, March, and April 1999, I drove around the region and shot about 525 photos on twenty-one rolls of film. I think the end result is an accurate portrayal of the mall and mall culture in contemporary America.
Southern California is an appropriate place for this survey, with its reputation of being a center of car culture, suburban culture, and consumer culture - all the components of our post-war American lifestyle that made the mall what it is today. Despite its reputation, L.A. was not an innovator in this field. It was home to the nation's first major integrated shopping center managed by one party (Crenshaw Center in 1947), but it lagged in development of centers built around pedestrian malls (Seattle's Northgate in 1950) and in enclosed, climate-controlled centers (Minneapolis' Southdale in 1956). But malls have flourished here, and what one could say about malls here could be said about malls anywhere.
What these photos show is how the mall is not only a mechanism for selling consumer goods but also a consumer good itself. In 50 years, the basic concepts of mall development have not changed, but malls themselves are in a constant evolution. Consumer tastes and opinions, expressed in both sales volume and market surveys, determine what works and what doesn't, and where malls are headed. Changes in population, demographics, and competition have caused once-mighty malls to fall, with larger, more modern centers taking their place. There are several types of centers geared towards different market segments, their design and tenant mix unmistakably different. Furthermore, there is the ongoing addition, renovation, and remerchandising that remake the mall's image as times and tastes change.
But there is more to the mall than the business of retail. Malls are community centers, one of the few places in the city where people from every background come together. The mall is a controlled environment, an air-conditioned "Main Street" that has become an essential part of the suburban landscape and lifestyle. Its design and amenities are appreciated by the community and many feel a close relation to it. When a mall closes, not only is it a commercial failure, but it has also failed the community it served. The "downtown" is gone, and so is that unique sense of community.
I would like to thank Professors Martin Krieger, Tridib Banerjee, and Robert Biller of the School of Policy, Planning, and Development as well as Susan Kamei of the Urban Land Institute, Los Angeles Chapter, and Jon Konarski of the International Council of Shopping Centers for their support in giving me an opportunity to share my work.
A grant from the Educational Foundation of the International Council of Shopping Centers supported this exhibition.