A shopping mall is a collection of independent retail stores, services, and a parking area conceived, built, and maintained by a management company as a unit.
Shopping malls
may also contain restaurants, banks, theaters, professional offices, service stations, and other establishments. The fun factory is a recently created section in shopping malls where all age groups can enjoy their time; it includes different indoor swing options. A larger shopping area, often only partially covered but exclusively for pedestrians, in Great Britain is called a shopping district or a pedestrian district.These covered walkways, which date back at least to the 13th century, housed shops, warehouses, and merchant accommodations on several levels. The category with the highest increase in the shopping mall index compared to the month of August of the previous year was the footwear category, with an increase of 40.6 percent. A notable example is the Halton Lea Shopping Center (originally known as Shopping City) in Runcorn, which opened in 1972 and was conceived as the central point for the development of the new city. Many of the first shopping malls, such as the Burlington Arcade in London, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and numerous shopping malls in Paris, are famous and continue to function as shopping malls, while many others have been demolished.
Some malls also have international food chains in their food court, and this is not the only attraction for shoppers, but also for people looking for good taste and new experiences. Consumers, while finding large shopping malls convenient, may find the abundance of products tempting and spending more than their budget allows. The most popular shopping malls throughout history include the Grand Bazaar in Isfahan, which is largely covered and dates back to the 10th century, and the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, covered by 10 kilometers in length. Pedestrian shopping malls (shopping streets) in the United States have been less common and less successful than in Europe.
Valley Fair featured a number of modern features, such as central heating and cooling, a large outdoor parking area, terraced stores, and restaurants. When the Cleveland Arcade opened in 1890, it was one of the first indoor malls in the United States and, like its European counterparts, it was an architectural triumph. In many cases, regional and superregional malls exist as parts of large superstructures that often also include offices, residential spaces, amusement parks, etc. St.
Petersburg, which opened in 1785, can be considered one of the first shopping mall type shopping complexes built specifically, since it consisted of more than 100 stores covering an area of more than 53,000 m2 (570,000 square feet). Other large cities created shopping arcades and shopping centers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as the Cleveland Arcade and the Gum in Moscow, which opened in 1890. Two of the largest malls at the time were located in the San Fernando Valley, a suburban area of Los Angeles.
