Transposing the Urban to the Mall

Abstract

Scholars understand shopping malls as central commercial and social settings. Some argue that malls' designs attract and seduce consumers, while others contend that mall authorities exclude vulnerable groups and prohibit free expression. Ethnographic studies, by contrast, document how consumers interpret and shape malls as social settings. Drawing on qualitative research in two Santiago, Chile, malls, we contend that Santiago's patterns of socioeconomic segregation and ample public transport facilitate cross-class interactions in malls. These characteristics encourage visitors to transpose practices and meanings from other public settings to the mall, drawing on rules for public interaction. Residents adapt mall infrastructures for noncommercial uses and engage in informal and formal resistance, reflecting conflicts between abstract and social space. The analysis shows that distinctive urbanization patterns significantly shape how consumers access and use malls as social spaces.

Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces

“…Similarly, if infrastructure is designed, built, and maintained with only a narrow demographic in mind, this may undermine its function as social infrastructure. It would also be important to consider the way social infrastructures vary around the world and the different kinds of sociality it facilitates (Anguelovski, Irazábal-Zurita, & Connolly, 2019;Chen, 2010;Simone, 2006;Stillerman & Salcedo, 2012;Teo & Neo, 2017). Here, it is important to recognise the role of planning in the design and provision of social infrastructure-researchers might look for exemplary cases of infrastructural provision for otherwise overlooked and underserviced communities (Berney, 2017;Damyanovic, Reinwald, & Weikmann, 2013;Talen, 2019).…”

Understanding How and Why Spatial Segregation Endures: A Systematic Review of Recent Research on Intergroup Relations at a Micro-Ecological Scale

“…Such places were widely varying and included an open beach in post-apartheid South Africa (Dixon & Durrheim, 2003;Durrheim, 2005;Durrheim & Dixon, 2005) and senior citizen centres in a USA western state (Salari, Brown, & Eaton, 2006). They also included public urban places in Northern Ireland (N = 2;Abdelmonem & McWhinney, 2015;Nagle, 2009), Spain (Pérez Tejera, 2012), Australia (Priest, Paradies, Ferdinand, Rouhani, & Kelaher, 2014), the USA (Spitz, 2015), the Philippines (Garrido, 2013), South Africa (Besharati & Foster, 2013), and England (Kesten, Cochrane, Mohan, & Neal, 2011), as well as green public places in Chile (Krellenberg, Welz, & Reyes-Päcke, 2014), pubs and nightclubs in South Africa (Tredoux & Dixon, 2009) and the USA (Hunter, 2010), and shopping malls in Chile (Stillerman & Salcedo, 2012). Finally, two studies focused on understanding the use and seating patterns of different ethnic groups along a bus line in a province of Spain (Arjona & Checa, 2008) and on a train line in the USA, Chicago (Swyngedouw, 2013).…”

“…For this, it has focused on students (e.g., Alexander & Tredoux, 2010), beachgoers (e.g., Dixon & Durrheim, 2003), senior centre attendants (Salari et al, 2006) and public transport users (e.g., Arjona & Checa, 2008;Swyngedouw, 2013). However, various authors have also investigated micro-ecological segregation in relation to religious categories (N = 5;Abdelmonem & McWhinney, 2015;McKeown et al, 2012;McKeown et al, 2016;Nagle, 2009;Orr et al, 2012), socioeconomic status (N = 4; Garrido, 2013;Krellenberg et al, 2014;Pérez Tejera, 2012;Stillerman & Salcedo, 2012), gender (N = 1; Messner & Bozada-Deas, 2009), and gender and ethnic background (N = 1; Rodriguez-Navarro et al, 2014). Taking into account the considerable diversity of types of segregation and contexts studied, the next section will outline the main findings of such studies.…”

Target Markets - International Terrorism Meets Global Capitalism in the Mall

“…In Santiago, Chile, many "visit malls but spend little or no money, seeking entertainment or companionship." 152 Similarly, in India, many malls are frequented by people who spend time in the mall, but do not shop. In the space of the mall, everyone is a potential consumer not only of the commodities sold, but of the idea of the mall itself and the cultures of consumption it generates.…”