What really sparked questioning for me this week was the article Entertainment Returns to Gotham. Urban entertainment centers seem to be a rapidly growing trend. According to Rubin, Gorman, and Lawry’s classifications and described characteristics, DestiNY is not a mall, but another urban entertainment center. Which leads me to question where do we draw lines between shopping malls and UECs?
Any promenade lined with shops can indeed be called a mall. But we do not classify Main Street USA at Disneyland a mall do we? From my view, DestiNY is not a mega mall, for I see a shopping mall to be a destination purely driven by shopping in stores, not by side attractions, water parks, night life, and marinas. DestiNY and other ‘mega malls’ like The South China Mall are actually UECs and should not have the label mall attached at all for these places have the draw of shops but are also largely and mainly drawing in consumers by ‘entertainment districts’ and attractions; they are larger than some towns and require interior transport by monorail or boat. DestiNY is so large in area that it even has its own zip code. Now how can places like that be labeled as a ‘mall’?
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