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A shopping mall or shopping centre is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area – a modern, indoor version of the traditional marketplace.

Modern “car-friendly” strip malls developed from the 1920s, and shopping malls corresponded with the rise of suburban living in the United States after World War II.

All pain no gain

In most of the world the term shopping centre is used, especially in Europe and Australasia; however shopping Themall is also used, predominantly in North America.^[1] Shopping precinct and shopping arcade are also used. In North America, the term shopping mall is usually applied to enclosed retail structures (and may be abbreviated to simply mall) while shopping center usually refers to open-air retail complexes, both usually have large parking lots, face major traffic arterials and have few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighborhoods.

A cafe a day

An early indoor mall in the United States was the Lake View Store at Morgan Park, Duluth, Minnesota, which was built in 1915 and held its grand opening on July 20, 1916. The architect was Dean and Dean from Chicago and the building contractor was George H. Lounsberry from Duluth. The building is two stories with a full basement, and shops were originally located on all three levels. All of the stores were located within the interior of the mall; some shops were accessible from inside and out.

and all that's nice

Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is advertised at 700,000 m² (7,500,000 sq ft). Beijing's (Peking) Golden Resources Mall, which opened in October 2004, is the world's second largest mall, at 600,000 m² (6,500,000 sq ft). SM City North EDSA in the Philippines, which opened in November 1985, is the world's third largest at 460,000 m² (5,000,000 sq ft) of gross floor area, and SM Mall of Asia in the Philippines, opened in May 2006, is the world's fourth largest at 386,000 m² (4,150,000 sq ft) of gross floor area.

Clothing is everything

An outlet mall (or outlet centre) is a type of shopping mall in which manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Other stores in outlet malls are operated by retailers selling returned goods and discontinued products, often at heavily reduced prices. Outlet stores were found as early as 1936, but the first multi-store outlet mall, Vanity Fair, located in Reading, PA didn't open until 1974. Belz Enterprises opened the first enclosed factory outlet mall in 1979, in Lakeland, TN, a suburb of Memphis.^[16]

Getting the right parking spot

In parts of Canada, it is now rare for new shopping malls to be built. The Vaughan Mills Shopping Centre, opened in 2004, and Crossiron Mills, opened in 2009, are the only malls built in Canada since 1992.

Outdoor outlet malls or big box shopping areas known as power centres are now favored, although the traditional enclosed shopping mall is still in demand by those seeking weather-protected, all-under-one-roof shopping. In addition the enclosed interconnections between downtown multi story shopping malls continue to grow in the Underground city of Montreal (32 kilometres of passageway), the PATH system of Toronto (27 km (17 mi) of passageway) and the Plus15 system of Calgary (16 km (9.9 mi) of overhead passageway).