Norway's Foolish Detour into Shopping Malls (60 years since the shopping mall was invented)

Almost exactly six decades ago the enclosed suburban shopping mall was invented. It was a wholly new form of development, never seen previously. A B-list architect by the name of Victor Gruen, previously known mainly for designing retail shops and department stores, wrote a treatise on this building type. When his manifesto was published in in the June 1952 issue of Progressive Architecture magazine, it fired up the imaginations of both developers and city officials. Since then, many hundreds of malls have been built on thousands of acres in virtually every part of the country. All of them followed Gruen’s simple but compelling model: two or three department stores anchoring the ends of parallel rows of smaller stores that face towards an interior, covered passageway. - Better! Cities & Towns

The World's Largest Shopping Mall:

- America's foolish detour into shopping malls