Coping With Mega‐mall Development: An Urban Planning Perspective on West Edmonton Mall

Abstract

The development of West Edmonton Mall is presented as a case study in the problem of coping with unexpected, large‐scale departures from authorized plans ‐ in this instance, the plan for the new suburban community of West Jasper Place. The main features of the plan are described and the practical consequences of permitting the mall to be built are assessed. It is concluded that Edmonton's conventional planning instruments were unable to respond effectively to the challenge posed by West Edmonton Mall, because the local planning system did not make adequate provision for the politics of plan implementation.

Resilient Forms of Shopping Centers Amid the Rise of Online Retailing: Towards the Urban Experience

“…However, as one retail consultant suggests, "they [suburban malls] are now starting to run out of who the next anchor is" (M8). In the 1980s, West Edmonton Mall (WEM) quickly expanded from an ordinary dumbbell mall into a mega-mall within one decade by introducing various retail and non-retail attractions [76], but it failed to cope with the recent downfall of Sears Canada. Sears' problems were disclosed several years ago [77], but WEM maintained its Sears store until the company announced a full liquidation in 2017 [78].…”

“…The city has led modern shopping center development in Canada since the 1980s, developing the first mega-mall in the world, West Edmonton Mall [76], and the largest power center in Canada, South Edmonton Common [83].…”

Crime and disorder, and house sales and prices around the casino sites in Windsor, Ontario, Canada

“…Some of these megastructures are located in greenfield sites on the edge of cities where their primary neighbourhood effect is orienting the future land use and transportation infrastructure around them (Ford 1998). Others such as Windsor's casinos are located in or near older‐urban neighbourhoods where they may also depreciate or revitalise the surrounding pre‐existing physical, economic and social fabric (Rubenstein 1984; Smith 1991). On the one hand, an initial example of urban casinos' depreciation of their neighbourhood was from Atlantic City, NJ, where the increased criminal activity during its post‐casino period was concluded to have caused a four percent loss in aggregate property value (Hakim and Buck 1989; Buck et al 1991).…”

West Edmonton Mall as a Centre for Social Interaction

“…Enclosure segregates WEM, both physically and psychologically, from the rest of the city. The building's near-windowless bricked exterior, surrounded by two-level parking lots and four-lane roads, does little to integrate the structure with the surrounding residential suburbs, let alone the city centre, nine kilometres to the east (Allaby 1985;Smith 1991 ;Zeidler 1983, 154-55;Edmonton, City of 1986a, 4). Excluded from the megamall are basic amenities traditionally found in highly used and popular public places: mail boxes, library services, senior or youth drop-in centres, a simple drinking fountain.…”