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Originally Posted by jg6544
Interesting discussion. I had never really considered this aspect of the shopping mall boom.
In my experience, the following factors accounted for the change in shopping (and commuting) habits.
1) After WWII, huge numbers of vets and their growing families, seeking more living space than they had grown up with, moved to the less expensive, tract homes in the growing suburbs. With a VA loan, almost every veteran and his (or her) family could purchase a new home.
2) That, plus the greater availability of new cars (the auto companies had begun to reconvert weapons factories to car factories while the War was still going on) led people to abandon mass transit, which, in turn increased commute times and stimulated the freeway building boom in most major cities. By the end of the 1950s, the only cities with commuter rail were on the east coast, in the Chicago area, and, to some degree, on the peninsula south of San Francisco. Most people drove their cars.
3) The crowding on the roads wasn't confined to commuting; it became more difficult to go downtown to shop almost everywhere. Then, there was the question of what to do with the car once you arrived downtown. Downtown shopping districts had disappeared almost entirely within 20 years of the end of the War. Major exceptions were New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Everywhere else, downtown stores were closing fast.
4) In Texas, where I grew up, another reason for the rapid growth of malls was that they had begun to be entirely enclosed and air conditioned by the late 1950s. I think the first air conditioned malls in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio had all opened by 1960 and were rapidly followed by others.
Now, the country is almost entirely "malled". I never did like them much. Beverly Hills is about a 20-minute commute from where I live (in good traffic) and there are plenty of stores and garages with valet, but given the time, I still prefer shopping in San Francisco - downtown, in big stores.
j
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I completely agree with these points and these are definitely the practical reason for why malls popped up. This article did however make an interesting ideological connection that seems to be an underlying driver of all of the patters you outlined above when it said, " Against this backdrop, Gruen's design for an insular utopia had substantial appeal:"
With this line, the article reminds us that Americans during the early part of the cold war were searching for utopia in almost every form. This mindset seemed to permeate every facet of life from perfect lawns and houses associated with the 50s to literature such as Fahrenheit 451 that continuously dared to create futuristic "utopias." Given this, it would make sense that shopping mall would have such deep appeal because every mall was a little utopia and could be controlled in every possible way.
Though the other cold war connections may be a stretch a best, this connection with utopia really resonated with me and highlighted the ideological shift that was needed to create the mall. Without this ideological shift to complement the geographic shift, we might have seen the town centers of today's more progressive suburbs pop up in 1955.. Similarly, without the present day disillusionment of utopia, we might see a demand for downtown malls vs outdoor, street-facing retail.