Shopping Malls and the Malaysian Lifestyle

obtain perambulations and the Malaysian Lifestyle1.0 IntroductionShopping perambulation is of necessity the main focal point in many Malaysia city and shop has become the Malaysian favorite pastime during weekends. Moreover, series of mega sales and discount nonethelessts expect encouraged the act of consumption, turning the shop center(a) become one of vital element in our modus vivendi.The role of shopping center is gradually replace actual globe space in many modern Asian cities where the people do not provoke worldly concern parks or squ atomic number 18s to hangout. Instead, a weekend family affair may just spend in the movie theatre or restaurants inside shopping center. Therefore, shopping center is evolving into a current force whose impact should not be neglected.Nowadays, a new kind of shopping center known as the life style center began emerging in Malaysia. According to International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), the lifestyle center features an open-a ir architecture, typically high-end retailers, may or may not include anchor stores, and has a queen-sized concentration of dining and entertainment facilities. The properties be usually well landscaped and take awayer outdoor ar dickensrk, music, and trams or trolleys for on-site transportation. It is intended to support a shopping as entertainment mindset and has become highly popular in affluent communities. We can see the emerge of lifestyle malls in Greater Kuala Lumpur peculiarly suburban Kuala Lumpur such(prenominal) as 1Mont Kiara, The Curve, Jaya One, Wangsa Walk, Sunway Giza, Alamanda Putrajaya and the list goes on.Originated in US, lifestyle center combining the traditionalistic retail functions of a shopping mall with leisure amenities in a town lame or main street setting confirm become common in affluent suburban areas and are now one of the most popular retail formats in US. However, in Malaysia, the professionals are keener to recognize it as Lifestyle Mall since most of them are interior setting precisely incorporated with outdoor walking mall. Thus, hereinafter, I leave behind use the term lifestyle mall in describing the Malaysia context.2.0 Problem StatementThe issuance of lifestyle malls poses interesting question for urbanism in Malaysia. Cities in the Malaysia especially Greater Kuala Lumpur are characterized by sprawling suburban, which a pattern of development being criticized by several theorists. According to Jane Jacobs in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she arguing that modernist planning policies that promoted highway construction has been destroyed many existing inner-city communities (Jacobs, 1961). After that, others writers such as Joel Garreau, Dolores Hayden and Robert Bruegmann agreed that suburban sprawl occurred to the destructive of urban life in America (Garreau, 1991 Hayeden Wark, 2004 Bruegmann, 2006).Furthermore, most of the critics on the rapid suburbanization that occurred in Ame rica as well as Malaysia, is the changing of urban and social fabric in several ways, both physically and socially. According to Harriet Tregoning, he states that cars have become necessary to operative, shopping and living in suburban cities. The growing dependence on automobiles necessitated by low density, sprawling land use has valuable implications. People living in more sprawling regions tend to drive greater distance, own more cars, breathe more polluted air, face a greater risk of traffic fatalities and walk and use transit less.One of the most common arguments is that suburban development keep apartd occupierial areas from the commercial areas and working places that served them, thus creating sprawling, inharmonious mix of single family houses, shopping centers and office parks across the suburban landscape (Duanny, 2000 Kunstler, 1993). Many of the physical and social elements that constituted the whole step of the city civic art, civic life as well as usual realm w ere lost in the process of spatial segregation (Garreau, 1991 Duanny, 2000 Hayeden Wark, 2004 Bruegmann, 2006). suburbanization tends to isolate cosmic groups of society preventing the contact between diverse members of the population that is common in more traditional urban settings. According to Fellmann et all, the upwardly mobile resident of the city-younger, wealthier and better educated- took advantage of the automobile and highway to leave the central city. The poorer and older people were left behind. The central cities and suburbs became increasingly differentiated. Krueger and Gibbs stated that Suburbanization produces enormous obstacles to the creation of a sense of identity with the neighborhood of residence, since the links generated are minimal and the lack of social ties makes the construction of a sense of belonging to a place truly difficult (Krueger Gibbs, 2007). Duany writes It is difficult to identify a segment of the population that does not suffer in some w ay from the lifestyle imposed by modern-day suburban development (Duany, 2000). From a social perspective, most critics conclude that in suburbia, the private realm is privileged over that of the creation. Thus, without adequate public space, there is a severe shortage of venues where social interaction can take place because sharing the public realm, people have their opportunity to interact, and thus come to arrive at that they have little reason to fear each other. (Duany, 2000)The evolution of shopping center development in Kuala Lumpur began with the opening of the first purpose built supermarkets and emporiums such as Weld Supermarket, Yuyi Emporium and so on. The first shopping complex, Ampang Park arrived in 1973, followed by Campbell Complex, Wisma Stephen, Wisma Central, Sun Complex, Pertama Complex, Wisma MPI and Angkasaraya. These shopping complexes are essentially retail developments fit(p) within a podium block of a shopping cum office development. back tenants a re nonexistent and the complexes have poor amenities and park facilities. The retail outlets are generally small and the layout design is poor with little pedestrian circulation and inefficient use of space.Pertama Complex in Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman is among the first multiplication shopping complexes in Kuala Lumpur.The second generation of 80s shopping complexes were purpose built shopping complexes such as Sungai Wang Plaza (1978), Bukit Bintang Plaza (1979), Kota Raya (1982), Yow Chuan Plaza (1983), Imbi Plaza (1985), KL Plaza (1985), The Mall (1987), The Weld (1988) and Pudu Plaza (1989). These complexes enjoy good accessibility as they are located on main roads or at busy junctions of arterial or main roads. Ample parking lots are provided and easy entrance and exit points are strategically located for the convenience of shoppers who travel by car.Sg Wang Plaza, one of the popular shopping centers situated in Bukit Bintang shopping district of Kuala Lumpur.The shopping compl exes have much better design and the adoption of a equilib get on tenant mix has taken stage in the overall planning, leasing and design of the complexes. The size, distribution and layout of the retail lots are also carefully planned and designed. Anchor tenants such as Metrojaya, AEON Jusco, Isetan, Parkson are used as magnets and are purposely located to facilitate the flow of shoppers in the complexes.With rapid economic harvest-home and urbanization in the Klang Valley, a wide range of social and economic factors have combined to influence the trends in shopping center development. The third generation of shopping centers, from the 1990s to the present, has seen the birth of new giants, with the size determine the winner of competition. Mega sized centers with vast retail space, often spanning more than two million square feet and with multiple anchor tenants, multiple mini anchors and a host of shop lots. Huge car parks accommodating more than 3000 vehicles are common, with a communicate of internal roads and access to main roads and highways.These mega shopping centers are usually located in the suburbs and they include Sunway Pyramid, Mid Valley Megamall, One Utama Shopping Center, and Tropicana City Mall and so on. Perhaps being huge assures success. All the mega sized shopping centers have their individual niche markets and are thriving even facing competition with each others. For example, Sunway Pyramid integrated with its own planned resort Sunway Lagoon. Without exception, all shopping centers must have good or portentous merchandise mix and strong retail attractions in roam to succeed in the face of stiff competition.Mid Valley Megamall, the Malaysias largest suburban shopping center with 3 anchor tenants located in Bangsar.The trend is moving towards hypermarkets, which may be supplanting some of the old pop and mom style food product business. Hypermarkets are typically huge stand alone supermarket and department store type retail outle ts. Carrefour, Tesco, fiend are mushrooming over the suburban cities throughout peninsular Malaysia. For example, Giant, the largest retailer in Malaysia are currently operates 107 stores nationwide and there are more stores opening soon. On the other hand, Tesco has operates 36 stores throughout Peninsular Malaysia to date.Giant Hypermarket, the largest retailer in Malaysia is operating more than 100 stores throughout Malaysia.The major factors which have contributed towards the emergence of suburban shopping centers and hypermarkets are due to the suburbanization of residential development. With modified land available for residential development in the city, housing has spread to the surrounding land at the city fringes with vast space of available lands. With readying of road infrastructure, the young, mobile, rich and middle class families who demand for bigger homes and more luxurious features and better quality of living have migrated to the suburbs. Many of these resident ial developments have taken the form of new townships and self contained neighborhoods such as Subang Jaya, Petaling Jaya, Damansara and the list goes on. Retail followed as families continued to move from central cities to the suburbs.Besides, the increases of female employments also turn tail to the emergence of suburban shopping center and hypermarkets. More females are entering the workforce which will directly affect the retailing pattern. It is because the addition of household incomes has increase the purchasing power. Moreover, women engaged in full time employment have less time for shopping. Thus, it results the increase of bulk buying and reduction in relative frequency of shopping trips. However, the shopping has turned into a family affair. Thus, it is essential to provide all in one shopping activities including shopping, food, entertainment and leisure with more emphasize on convenience, comfort and family oriented attractions and entertainment.While suburban malls only if served the retail needs of suburban residents, critics began to argue that they eliminated any chance communities have for possessing physical continuity on the urban fabric since they usually located along the main route (Torino, 2005). Developers of suburban malls tend to over verbalism the role of shopping center as a forum of public gathering and social interaction. However, the suburban malls are not public spaces at all they are designed for single purpose consumption. superior Gruen, the architect of the first modern suburban shopping mall in United States, recognized the breakdown of traditional community bonds are driven by uncontrollable suburban sprawl. Thus, Gruen envisioned the suburban mall to serve as the new town center which is muffled, mixed use environments that could take place of traditional main streets and town squares. Gruen accomplished that the process of suburbanization was weakening the social bonds in a society that was fostered mainly in clos e knit rural communities and dense urban settlements. (Torino, 2005)Gruens idea was to make shopping malls more pedestrian friendly, which he achieved by putting the entire development under one roof, with stores on two levels connected by escalators and fed by two-tiered parking. In the middle of the mall was a town square, which featured a garden court under a skylight, a fishpond, enormous sculpted trees, a twenty-one-foot cage filled with exotic birds, balconies with hanging plants, and a caf (Gladwell, 2004). However, Gruens vision of shopping mall failed to function as town centers due to several reasons. In contrast to traditional town centers, which were extroverted, meaning that store windows and entrances faced both the parking areas and the interior pedestrian walkways, indoor malls were introvert the exterior walls presented a blank faade, and all of the activity was concentrateed inward (Gladwell, 2004). According to Michael Sorkin, the design of shopping malls tends to reinforce the domestic values and physical order of suburbia, rather than rectify it. In his book Variations on a Theme Park, Sorkin states, Like the suburban house that rejects the sociability of front porches and sidewalks for private back yards, malls look inward, turning their backs on the public street (Sorkin, 1992). Since most malls are located in the middle of vast parking lots set well off the street, what Sorkin refers to as pedestrian islands in an asphalt sea, their physical setting represents yet another crack in the already fragmented suburban landscape (Sorkin, 1992). some other reason why malls have failed to function as the traditional town centers that Gruen envisioned is that they are, by and large, built for a single purpose retail. According to Kevin Mattson, Whereas in cities, towns, and villages, public space invites mixed usage and contains churches, schools, courts, theaters, civic buildings and stores, malls are exclusively commercial. Access and archit ecture together conspire to make buying and selling the only thinkable activities (Mattson, 2009). Mattson argues that since malls are the only public spaces left in many parts of the country, they must become more like real towns with a commixture of uses If commerce is not to become the sole activity we engage in when we are in public, malls must offer alternative activities civic, cultural, athletic, political, and recreational that define us as citizens as well as consumers (Mattson, 2009).Many urban scholars have pointed to the obvious fact that shopping malls are not true public spaces, but privatized ones where management ultimately reserves the right to limit access. In his book The Right to the City Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, Don Mitchell touches on the idea that malls are exclusive places, where certain groups and behaviors are not welcome (rowdy teenagers, the homeless, and political demonstrations, for example). Mitchell also comments that malls ar e heavily patrolled by private security forces and are subject to constant surveillance (Mitchell, 2003).Malcolm Voyce has noted that malls do not coincide with the need for an open and democratic public space and that their private nature limits and controls motley (Voyce, 2006). Private ownership and restricted access, therefore, undermine the shopping malls ability to function as a true, democratic public space.The recent trends mark the emergence of lifestyle malls mushrooming at the suburban Klang Valley. To be named a few The Curve, the pioneer lifestyle mall in Malaysia Sunway Pyramid, Jaya One, Wangsa Walk, Alamanda Putrajaya, Axis Atrium, Sunway Giza which are operating SSTwo Mall, 1Mont Kiara, Subang Avenue, Citta, Setia Walk, Setia Avenue and the list goes on which are on construction to join the lifestyle demand. Therefore, it is not strange that Business Week Magazine has referred the lifestyle malls as the Shopping Center of the twenty-first Century.The above lifestyl e malls share several commons. Design ambience reflecting a main street motif is great emphasized. The developers often cite a large emphasis on food and entertainment, elements that further contribute to the atmosphere of the project. Parking is also a major tinct where it is usually arranged in structures or placed underground (Malmuth, 2005). Moreover, the inclusion of mixed uses also can be found in the quality of lifestyle malls. The inclusion of non retail uses is what sets apart lifestyle malls from other retail developments, to the extent that certain developer, such as Sime UEP Brunsfield, will claim that the word lifestyle is meaningless if residential component is not incorporated.The rise of lifestyle mall also raises other all important(p) questions, particularly about how and whether the shopping centers also function as public spaces. Perhaps the most important factor leading to the emergence of lifestyle malls, however, and the focus of this thesis, is the recognit ion of the increasing importance of shopping centers as public spaces in suburban life. Outside of urban centers, suburbia offers very few public gathering places. Therefore, strolling through suburban malls has become the favorite pastime during weekends. It is however important to realize that the main concern of shopping center is still concern about commercial activities. While the fact is, people do not only shop in a mall, they do hangout and socialize in the same time. Besides, there are also critics on the suburban shopping malls that reinforce unsustainable suburban sprawl. Some argue that lifestyle centers represent part of an effort to reduce the effects of suburban sprawl, through the reintroduction of traditional mixed use setting. Other argues that they are only tools to authorize since they are privately owned, carefully controlled. Therefore, do lifestyle malls truly represent better forms of public space than conventional malls? Developers of lifestyle malls seem t o have realized that improved retail design can act as a forum for social activity as well as a lineage of increased revenue (Torino, 2005). If so, are they alternatives to malls as models for public space in suburban? Do lifestyle malls represent a new typology of quasi public space? And how public are those lifestyle malls?3.0 AimThis research aims to view the emergence of lifestyle malls of their ability to function as public space.4.0 Objectives4.1 To examine the publicness of lifestyle malls.4.2 To determine the perception of shoppers experiences towards the function of lifestyle malls.4.3 To recognize the lifestyle malls as a new form of public space in suburban.5.0 Research Questions5.1 How public are lifestyle malls?5.2 How do the shoppers perceive the lifestyle malls role?5.3 How lifestyle malls represent a new form of public space in suburban?6.0 Outline of MethodologyTo answer these questions, a variety of methods will be applied. The overall methods are qualitative.Res earch which is primarily based on journals, articles and others.Attempt to examine the characteristic of public space in order to identify the function of lifestyle malls as public space in the context of ideas by theorists such as George Varna, Steve Tiesdell, Adam Tyndall, Kevin Lynch, W. Lewis Dijkstra, Jan Gehl as well as Project of Public Space.Interviews with planners and developers, member of Malaysian Association for Shopping and Highrise Complex ManagementBrief intelligence regarding the trend of shopping centers in Malaysia, planning and development of selected lifestyle malls.Surveys of shoppers experience at lifestyle malls.Survey on the perceptions of shoppers towards lifestyle malls as social focus and public space.ObservationObservation on the physical design of lifestyle mall, degree to the mixed tenants and how the public use the spaces.7.0 Structure of the ThesisChapter 1Suburban development in Greater Kuala Lumpur, trend of shopping center in MalaysiaChapter 2Dis cussion on the role of public space and how lifestyle mall fit into the context of public spaceChapter 3Case StudiesChapter 4Survey results obtained at each lifestyle malls, observation on the quality of public space, design, level of mixed use, community events sponsored by each lifestyle mallChapter 5Concludes with a discussion of results and implications of the research.8.0 Expected OutputThe expected output will beAble to assess whether lifestyle mall in Greater Kuala Lumpur can function as public space.Able to determine that lifestyle mall can be another form of public space in suburban Kuala Lumpur.Able to recognize the characteristics of lifestyle mall that contribute to creation of public space.