(S)mall fortunes

What was intended as a pedestrian-friendly version of European street life has become the bane of many shoppers' lives. 

- MATT VANCE

The official representative of mall management has appeared out of nowhere. She is dressed in a crisp uniform; her security pass flaps from a lanyard around her neck as she strides purposefully towards us.

In her left hand is a large walkie-talkie. She looks like she is about to hit someone. Unlike other mall-goers, she will not be influenced by midnight sales or flashy marketing, nor is she suffering urban dementia. There will be no impulse purchases on her way over to me and the small group of students who are discussing the finer points of mall architecture and how it is designed to create a landscape of consumer fantasy. I lower my eyes from her looming gaze and continue talking with my students.

PEDESTRIANS FIRST

The mall is an invention that completely backfired on its inventor, architect Victor Gruen, an Austrian Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1938 to avoid the looming hand of the Third Reich. He landed in New York with an architect's degree, welldeveloped socialist politics and no English.

He started to work as an architectural draughtsman.

As it turned out, Gruen had a knack for designing commercial retail property. He produced successful designs for boutique retailers on Fifth Avenue and Broadway and the clothing chain Grayson's. By the time he moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s, he had branched out into broader urban planning work.

When he arrived in the US, he had been struck by the contrast between the pedestrian-friendly public places of Europe, designed centuries before the invention of the automobile, and those of his new home where the power of the car dictated the use of public space. He was a great believer that public urban landscapes need to revolve around pedestrians.