Mall Walkers

“a formulaic collection of fully enclosed space occupied mostly by national retailers and surrounded by seas of surface parking.”

Mark Byrnes, 2013

Mall Walkers are people who make use of the relative safety (and air-conditioned comfort) of large shopping malls in the USA to meet and also to complete their exercise.

This Atlantic piece explores the Mall of America.

In the USA, the streets can be dangerous place, and many have no sidewalk. Public parks are also seen as unsafe in some cases, but malls often have security guards and CCTV and are also easily accessible.

They are now reopening after the pandemic and making up for lost time.

A lot has been written about malls, and the work of Victor Gruen.

He wrote about the promise of shopping malls and his office designed many early malls.

I also followed up on Victor Gruen's classic book on Shopping Malls (Internet Archive link)