From Main Street to Mall

From Main Street to Mall PDF Author: Vicki Howard
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812291484
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of social activity in local communities. But after World War II, suburban growth and the ubiquity of automobiles shifted the seat of economic prosperity to malls and shopping centers. The subsequent rise of discount big-box stores and electronic shopping accelerated the pace at which local department stores were shuttered or absorbed by national chains. But as the outpouring of nostalgia for lost downtown stores and historic shopping districts would indicate, these vibrant social institutions were intimately connected to American political, cultural, and economic identities. The first national study of the department store industry, From Main Street to Mall traces the changing economic and political contexts that transformed the American shopping experience in the twentieth century. With careful attention to small-town stores as well as glamorous landmarks such as Marshall Field's in Chicago and Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, historian Vicki Howard offers a comprehensive account of the uneven trajectory that brought about the loss of locally identified department store firms and the rise of national chains like Macy's and J. C. Penney. She draws on a wealth of primary source evidence to demonstrate how the decisions of consumers, government policy makers, and department store industry leaders culminated in today's Wal-Mart world. Richly illustrated with archival photographs of the nation's beloved downtown business centers, From Main Street to Mall shows that department stores were more than just places to shop.

From Main Street to Mall

From Main Street to Mall PDF Author: Vicki Howard
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812291484
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
The geography of American retail has changed dramatically since the first luxurious department stores sprang up in nineteenth-century cities. Introducing light, color, and music to dry-goods emporia, these "palaces of consumption" transformed mere trade into occasions for pleasure and spectacle. Through the early twentieth century, department stores remained centers of social activity in local communities. But after World War II, suburban growth and the ubiquity of automobiles shifted the seat of economic prosperity to malls and shopping centers. The subsequent rise of discount big-box stores and electronic shopping accelerated the pace at which local department stores were shuttered or absorbed by national chains. But as the outpouring of nostalgia for lost downtown stores and historic shopping districts would indicate, these vibrant social institutions were intimately connected to American political, cultural, and economic identities. The first national study of the department store industry, From Main Street to Mall traces the changing economic and political contexts that transformed the American shopping experience in the twentieth century. With careful attention to small-town stores as well as glamorous landmarks such as Marshall Field's in Chicago and Wanamaker's in Philadelphia, historian Vicki Howard offers a comprehensive account of the uneven trajectory that brought about the loss of locally identified department store firms and the rise of national chains like Macy's and J. C. Penney. She draws on a wealth of primary source evidence to demonstrate how the decisions of consumers, government policy makers, and department store industry leaders culminated in today's Wal-Mart world. Richly illustrated with archival photographs of the nation's beloved downtown business centers, From Main Street to Mall shows that department stores were more than just places to shop.

Mall City

Mall City PDF Author: Stefan Al
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888208969
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hong Kong is the twenty-first-century paradigmatic capital of consumerism. Of all places, it has the densest and tallest concentration of malls, reaching tens of stories. Hong Kong’s malls are also the most visited, sandwiched between subways and skyscrapers. These mall complexes have become cities in and of themselves, accommodating tens of thousands of people who live, work, and play within a single structure. Mall City features Hong Kong as a unique rendering of an advanced consumer society. Retail space has come a long way since the nineteenth-century covered passages of Paris, which once awed the bourgeoisie with glass roofs and gaslights. It has morphed from the arcade to the department store, and from the mall into the “mall city”—where “expresscalators” crisscross mesmerizing atriums. Highlighting the effects of this development in Hong Kong, this book raises questions about architecture, city planning, culture, and urban life. “At the nexus of density, humidity, topography, and prosperity, Hong Kong has spawned more malls per square mile than any place on earth. This fantastic book decodes and graphically depicts an environment both apart and ubiquitous, a convulsive form of public space in a liquid territory where intensely contested politics, commerce, and sociability weirdly merge in a city like no other.” —Michael Sorkin, distinguished professor of architecture of the City University of New York “Hong Kong may be packed with the most shopping malls per square kilometer in the world, but Mall City is packed with the most drawings, information, and fascinating mall facts. The book dissects, categorizes, and displays all kinds of intriguing data on the city-state’s shopping complexes and culture. Its richly layered analysis perfectly matches Hong Kong’s multi-story machines for consumption.” —Clifford Pearson, director of USC American Academy in China “Stefan Al has again produced a book that provides a sharp lens on radically new urban forms that are emerging in China. While his previous books, Villages in the City andFactory Towns of South China introduced the site of production and housing for the migrant labor of the Pearl River Delta, here we enter the phantasmagoria of the enormous interconnected free-trade shopping zone of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Mall City dissects the basic unit of this climate-controlled consumer landscape—the mall. This beautifully illustrated book is a must-read for those who wish to understand the future of public space in high-density cities.” —Brian McGrath, professor of urban design and dean of constructed environments, Parsons School of Design

America at the Mall

America at the Mall PDF Author: Lisa Scharoun
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786490500
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the construction of the first fully enclosed shopping center in 1952, the shopping mall has evolved into the heart of many suburban areas across the United States. More than simply a place to purchase goods, this veritable "temple of consumerism" has become a primary place for community and social interaction and an essential element in many citizens' day-to-day lives. This study explores the spiritual, emotional and physical effects of the enclosed shopping mall on the public, chronicling the growth of the mall, its role in shaping urban and suburban life, its positive and negative impacts on society and the environment, and its future viability. As this work shows, the mall remains rich in symbolic influence, and in many ways mirrors the American condition.

Malls Across America

Malls Across America PDF Author: Margaret Hundley Parker
Publisher: Steidl
ISBN: 9783869305479
Category : Photographers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Throughout the 1980s, as America's downtown districts declined in importance and the "big-box" stores began their slow march across the country, malls became increasing central to American popular culture, dominating the social life of a large swath of the population. In 1989 Michael Galinsky, a twenty-year-old photographer, drove across the country recording this change: the spaces, textures and pace that defined this era. Starting in the winter of 1989 with the Smith Haven Mall in Garden City Long Island, Galinsky photographed malls from North Carolina to South Dakota, Washington State and beyond. The photos he took capture life in these malls as it began to shift from the shiny excess of the 1980s towards an era of slackers and grunge culture. Malls Across America is filled with seemingly lost or harried families navigating their way through these temples of consumerism, along with playful teens, misfits, and the aged. There is a sense of claustrophobia to the images, even in those that hint at wide commercial expanses - a wall or a ceiling is always there to block the horizon. These photos never settle or focus on any one detail, creating the sense that they are stolen records of the most immediate kind.

Call of the Mall

Call of the Mall PDF Author: Paco Underhill
Publisher: Profile Business
ISBN: 9781861974426
Category : Consumer behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 227

Get Book Here

Book Description
Like Underhill's bestseller, Why We Buy, this is a pleasurable and informative book on how we shop that surprises and tickles. Like Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods, which took readers up the Appalachian Trail, this book takes readers to a place they know much better: the shopping centre, the place where people meet. Nothing exemplifies shopping more than the mall or shopping centre. It is the US's gift to personal consumption and the crossroad where consumer marketing, media and street culture meet. It is where the developed world (and increasingly everyone else too) goes to acquire, eat and hang out. It is where fashion trends are made dreams are constructed, and many people find their first jobs. The Call of the Mall is about sex and buying lingerie, about why the same camel coat costs exactly twice as much in the women's department to the men's, about why all mall food is so dreadful when the commodities in the shops are so good. Why location matters so much - but more for perfumes than DIY and why malls are invariably such bad architecture. Underhill's views on the mall are sophisticated, funny, serious, and surprising.

El Mall

El Mall PDF Author: Arlene Dávila
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520961927
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
While becoming less relevant in the United States, shopping malls are booming throughout urban Latin America. But what does this mean on the ground? Are shopping malls a sign of the region’s “coming of age”? El Mall is the first book to answer these questions and explore how malls and consumption are shaping the conversation about class and social inequality in Latin America. Through original and insightful ethnography, Dávila shows that class in the neoliberal city is increasingly defined by the shopping habits of ordinary people. Moving from the global operations of the shopping mall industry to the experience of shopping in places like Bogotá, Colombia, El Mall is an indispensable book for scholars and students interested in consumerism and neoliberal politics in Latin America and the world.

Tales from the Mall

Tales from the Mall PDF Author: Ewan Morrison
Publisher: Cargo Publishing
ISBN: 9781908885012
Category : Shopping malls
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fashion. Food Courts. Lingerie. Fire Bombing. Suicide. Free Parking. Welcome to the Mall. Why would one woman threaten to kill another for a pair of discounted shoes? Why are cross-dressers drawn to mall car parks? What do impulse buys have to do with rioting? And why are market research companies hiding the truth from us? From one of the UK s most acclaimed literary and media talents, Tales From The Mall, is a mash-up of fiction, essays and true stories, that tells the rise of the most iconic symbol of our modern age the shopping mall. From over a hundred interviews and confessions, Morrison re-tells the true-life tales of those who work, shop and even find love inside their walls. With wry wit, insight and compassion, Morrison uncovers the secrets of retail heaven and hell, to reveal how malls manipulate our emotions in cleverly calculated ways, how they are an ideal space to meet a new lover or to kill yourself and how they are taking over the world. A startling window on our time, to make you think, fear and laugh. Retail will never be therapy again.

Why We Buy

Why We Buy PDF Author: Paco Underhill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
The culmination of 15 years of meticulous research and observation, this riveting audiobook offers hilarious anecdotes and amazing hard facts about one of Americas favorite pastimes. Abridged. 7 CDs.

The Shopping Mall High School

The Shopping Mall High School PDF Author: Arthur G. Powell
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
The second report from "A Study of High Schools," based on interviews with teachers, students and parents.

Secrets of the Shopping Mall

Secrets of the Shopping Mall PDF Author: Richard Peck
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
ISBN: 9780440980995
Category : Department stores
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two eighth-grade loners decide to take up residence in a department store. Little do they know that theirs is not an original idea.