Need vs. Want

I wholeheartedly understand the “center.”
I don’t understand the empowerment one gets from shopping and this happiness that Zepp says one leaves with.
I feel that from architecture.
I feel that from travel and real life experience.
I feel that from religion.
I don’t feel that from entertainment and the shopping experience.
Or do I? Personally, if I go to a “center” to see a stand-up comic or a sporting event, I am entertained and I guess I leave feeling happier and slightly empowered that I got to do something I wanted to do. Knowing I spent money on something I wanted when I could have spent money on something I needed does bother me, however.
But when you think of the average person as described by Zepp, it seems that spending money on life’s necessities bothers them the most. It seems that modern society is least centered when doing that. Why spend extravagantly on a hotel with a huge room and bed when all you need is a bed and maybe an enclosed space, and in some cases you don’t even really need that. This may be getting a little too basic and maybe I am criticizing humanity on the whole, but why do we find “centeredness” in things we want and disappointment in things we need. If true harmony is centeredness with nature, life, and whatever higher power you may or may not believe in, why have places in which you splurge and obtain wants rather than needs overtaken these other places in which you can center yourself? “The Center was originally understood to be where God and people and heaven and earth were connected.” (Zepp 38)

Wheatley showed “how order integrates space at several significant levels.” (Zepp 51)
While Zepp “want[s] to add to this list the order of shopping malls, a combination of the ceremonial and the ritual” (Zepp 51) I however want to then again remove shopping malls from this list. Need and want are extremely different. Cosmic, political, ceremonial, and ritual all either satisfy a need or give back order and have circle-esque influences on humankind. Does the mall really center us as humans on a deeper level than the literal centering of our physical bodies in a space? Do we ever really need to be centered within the mall? Why is the mall sacred. I want to hear that 670 people out of 1000 who were surveyed said they saw the mall as a sacred space. We, meaning an audience of scholars, are over thinking the simplicity in the reasoning of the average human. Is the average individual profoundly moved by malls?

I like Zepp’s counterpoint to my claim of course, that when “churches, schools, and families (our three major institutions) fail us, we will seek other places to fulfill basic human needs.” Is the mall really the first place that comes to mind? Really? I’m not so convinced. I want to see surveyed individuals, families, church-goers, students. No doubt, malls, especially the large tourist attractions such as the Mall of America, have research and filled out surveys numbering ridiculously high on why people come to their mall. Do tourists and travelers go because they want to see the biggest mall and then get lost? It is more than a physical connection? I understand the point made there, but only briefly does Zepp even touch on the actual mental connections between these types of spaces.

It is almost like Venturi argued about Las Vegas. Zepp states that visitors of Prestonwood Town Center often “say that the easiest way to make a date at Prestonwood is to say, ‘meet you at the clock.’” (Zepp 56) Are we meeting in a center space because of its architectural implications or are we meeting at a sign that is simply so large and recognizable that no one could get lost if they oriented themselves at it? If the clock were near an entrance space would that space be deemed the “social” center of the mall, even if it is not geometrically or geographically central? We begin to argue semantics about the actual space of the mall and inevitably we can post-rationalize that each mall has a center. Is it about the feeling of a center or the geometry? Zepp needs to decide this in his writings. If it is about both why does he argue with some examples that exemplify either geometry or the social and human aspect of a center. Is one inherent with the other?

Ultimately, I know I am raising a lot of questions that we may not be able to answer. But when I read Ira Zepp’s The New Religion of Urban America I had nothing but these questions. Does anyone have the answers?