The enclosed shopping mall, an uniquely American retail innovation, was the “future of retail” in the 1950s and 60s.  Shopping centers became an icon of suburban living in the 1970s and 80s, before beginning their slowly accelerating decline in the 1990s.  Today, the growing number of dead or dying shopping malls and centers are seen as symbols of the downside of “suburban sprawl.”

One example of this pattern is the Plaza Pasadena shopping center, an enclosed mall established originally as the cornerstone of an urban revitalization effort in Pasadena, California.  See “A Case Study in Successful Failure” for more on the birth, life, death, and future of this mall.

From a planning perspective, local communities can no longer assume that shopping centers will…
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