World Regional
Geography, "The
Magic of the Mall" is based on the article written by Dr. Jon Goss. The entire text can be found in Annals of the Association
of American Geographers 81(1), 1991, pp. 18-47. Below is its abstract.
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The Magic of
the Mall: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail
Built Environment
By Jon Goss,
Department of Geography, University of Hawai‘i
Abstract: Shopping is the most important contemporary
social activity, and, for the most part, takes place in the shopping center.
Developers and designers of the retail built environment exploit the
power of place and an intuitive understanding of the structuration of space
to facilitate consumption and thus the realization of retail profits. They strive to present an alternative rationale for the shopping
center's existence, manipulate shoppers' behavior through the configuration
of space, and consciously design a symbolic landscape that provokes associative
moods and dispositions in the shopper.
These strategies are examined to obtain an understanding of how the
retail built environment works, and how we might work against it.
Key Words: consumption, shopping centers, malls,
megastructures, pseudoplace, spatial system, signification.