[bright music] (host) Why do all strip malls even across different states?

And what do zoning laws and a guy from Vienna have to do with it?

If there's any physical structure that's more indicative of being an '80s and '90s baby than a shopping mall, then I haven't discovered it yet.

From loitering near the flagship superstores at either end of the mall to hanging out by the inexplicably ugly fountains on the main floor, or grabbing a bite to eat in the food court-- you have to admit, it's kind of freaky that all malls almost look identical inside regardless of where in the country you go.

And that's only indoor malls.

Strip malls with their huge parking lots where you can't seem to ever find your car to their kind of beige two-tier buildings also have some really distinct architectural markers no matter where you go across the country.

But why is this true, since the towns where these structures spring up have vastly different and super unique landscapes and architecture that doesn't always match up?

And with the emergence of more and more dead malls across the country, is it officially safe to say that the internet killed the shopping-mall star?

So, to start off this episode, we should first ask ourselves: What did Americans do before shopping at the mall?

So, the basic definition of a shopping mall is a contained structure or adjacent set of structures that house a bunch of independent retailers.

So, each store is its own individual entity, but they share the space and resources the mall has to offer, like communal parking, visibility, and foot traffic from potential customers in order to boost their own business.

In exchange for being a part of the mall, they pay money to a retailer or whichever company actually owns the physical building that the mall is housed in.

According to Mary Bellis' article at ThoughtCo, "the department store was the shopping mall's natural American antecedent."

Department stores that came in around the late 19th century included John Wanamaker's the Grand Depot which opened in Philadelphia in 1877, Bloomingdale's which opened its doors in 1872, and Brigham Young's Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution in 1868.

Although you probably know Young more for being the founder of Mormonism than for his trendy clothing choices.

But Natasha Geiling Esri, in her "Smithsonian" article, also notes that while lots of folks in the U.S. think of the mall as a distinct cultural marker, the idea of getting everything in one place isn't exactly a new innovation, since open markets have existed across the world for centuries where merchants could bring their goods to trade and sell.

But both the open markets of yesteryear and today, as well as the 19th century early department stores were concentrated largely in city centers.

And that was because folks were pouring into cities during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century to work in factories and other industries that were centered there, and markets were often located in cities or more populated areas because they served as a more natural meeting point for various cross sections of folks to travel to in order to get the things that they needed.

And in the 19th century, folks were pouring into cities during the Industrial Revolution to work in factories and other industries that were concentrated there.

Okay, but now that we know that, we have to ask: When did indoor malls and strip malls start to spring up across the country, and why?

Shopping malls in the U.S., whether strip malls or big indoor malls, were distinctly different because they got their start in the mid 20th century, specifically in post-World War II suburbs.

During the post-World War II years, the country experienced a commercial and economic boom, and along with that boom came shifts in marketing and housing.

We start to see the explosion of suburban sprawl with socially, racially, and class-segregated housing moving outwards to the edge of suburban centers.

These pre-planned housing blocks were structured to create homes and communities that were near to cities so that residents could be removed from the city and also still have proximity to urban jobs.

But suburbs are also a part of urban flight.

And as a result, they were also designed as exclusionary zones for poor people and people of color.

And on top of that, the 1950s and '60s saw the rise of the commercialization of teen culture.

Brands and retailers began to turn their energy towards targeting products and services to teen audiences because teens in the 'burbs had money to spend and time to burn-- think "Rebel Without a Cause."

So, all of these folks are moving further outside of the city centers, but they still have a need for convenient proximity to goods and services.

On top of commutes into the city every week to buy things being inconvenient, it was also an increased challenge due to parking limits in urban spaces.

So, what were all these newly minted suburbanites supposed to do?

They said the same thing every suburban teen has said at least once in their life-- "Let's go to the mall."

So, that brings us to our next question: Why do all malls all kind of look the same?

Let's start with the strip mall, which somehow looks almost exactly the same no matter where you are in the third largest country on Earth.

So, some of the ubiquitous design elements of the suburban strip mall can be chalked up to single-use zoning laws, at least according to Scott Beyer's article at forbes.com.

Beyer notes that strip malls, the outdoor, huge-parking-lot, kind of beigey cousins of indoor malls owe a lot of their most noticeable features to city planning regulations that dictate how different developments can look and where they can be located.

First, in urban settings, most stores, fast-food chains, single restaurants, and residences, are kind of blended together, which makes them stand out less.

But many cities and suburbs operate under single use zoning that divides buildings into residential, commercial, and industrial spaces.

So, that's why you're really unlikely to see a huge strip mall in the middle of a treelined street or an industrial plant next to your grocery store, which seems like a pretty good thing.

Second, parking is still a key component of how strip malls are formed.

Strip malls, with their tons of traffic, both on foot and in cars, still have minimum parking requirements they need to abide by in order to open.

And Beyer notes that strip malls today have regulations that they have to be set back a certain distance from the road, which can include busy thoroughfares and highways in the name of safety.

As a result, and to accommodate those big old parking lots, the asphalt jungle is usually located at the front of the mall, so you can drop off your car first before you walk inside.

And finally, Beyer notes that commercial areas usually have density limits, which results in them having few to no residences inside or nearby because they attract so many shoppers.

So, these single-use spaces become dedicated only to stores, and as a result, they tend to have really similar shapes and sizes available for rent to retailers minus the architectural variety that a mix of stores and houses can offer a city.

So, I know you're probably thinking, "But, Danielle, what about indoor malls?"

Well, unlike strip malls, I never have been one to disappoint.

So, that brings us to our final question: When did the indoor malls start to develop, and why do they also kind of look the same?

Well, enter Victor Gruen, the post-war architect who designed your childhood, and you didn't even know it.

The first indoor shopping center in the U.S. was the Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota.

And that opened in 1956.

Victor Gruen was an immigrant from Vienna who came to the U.S. right before World War II and was responsible for the Southdale Center in Minnesota.

Before entering into the pages of history as a mall designer, he was also a theater maker and designer.

At the time that he started his design for the mall, he envisioned changing the outdoor strip malls that had previously existed, which had stores facing outward in one direction, overlooking the streets, to make it more intimate and inward.

Gruen called the strip malls and shopping centers that existed before his indoor mall "extroverted" because all of the storefronts faced the street and were fronted by big parking lots, which he found visually unappealing.

He made a mall that had two stories with stores that were all under the same roof, facing an internal courtyard that featured AC and a fountain.

Starting to sound kind of familiar?

And journalists really dug his new idea, since in Esri's article, she notes that at the time the mall opened, journalists hailed his new structure as "part of the American way."

And "Time" magazine even called Gruen's creation "a pleasure dome with parking."

That's some pretty flowery language for a shopping center.

Gruen was a theater buff with a flare for the dramatic.

And according to Gladwell's "New Yorker" article on him, he spent the next decade writing books, touring the country, and speaking to developers about his exciting new creation.

And people were hooked.

So, one guy had a good idea in 1956 in suburban Minnesota, and that idea began to spring up like mushrooms across the country.

And the new malls so closely mirrored Gruen's original creation, that even those of us who have never been to the first indoor mall in Edina can picture on our mind what it looks like, because the malls nearest to where we grew up probably look exactly the same, which is kind of nuts when you think about it.

If you've ever been to an American mall, then that means that we've all had a shared, relatively, identical childhood memory of completely different spaces and places and time!

Whoa.

Mind blown.

So, how does it all add up?

Well, even though the mall, both indoor and outdoor, has become a significant cultural marker of the latter half of the 20th century, leading into the present day, the shopping mall has also seen some ups and downs with the advent of online shopping.

Because instead of spending money and time driving to the mall, you can get almost anything you want by just clicking a button online.

But retailers and mall operators are looking to reinvigorate the supposedly dying mall, so don't count it out just yet.

So, what do you think?

Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

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