Shopping Mall - Regional Differences

Regional Differences

In most places, the term shopping centre is used, especially in Europe, Australia and South America; however shopping mall is also used, predominantly in North America. Outside of North America, shopping precinct and shopping arcade are also used. In North America, Gulf countries and India, the term shopping mall is usually applied to enclosed retail structures (and is generally abbreviated to simply mall), while shopping center usually refers to open-air retail complexes; both types of facilities usually have large parking lots, face major traffic arterials and have few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighborhoods.

Shopping centres in the United Kingdom can be referred to as "shopping centres" or "shopping precincts". Mall primarily refers to either a shopping mall – a place where a collection of shops all adjoin a pedestrian area – or an exclusively pedestrianised street that allows shoppers to walk without interference from vehicle traffic. Mall is generally used in North America to refer to a large shopping area usually composed of a single building which contains multiple shops, usually "anchored" by one or more department stores surrounded by a parking lot, while the term arcade is more often used, especially in Britain, to refer to a narrow pedestrian-only street, often covered or between closely spaced buildings (see town centre). In Britain, a larger, often partly covered and exclusively pedestrian shopping area is also termed a shopping centre, shopping precinct, or pedestrian precinct.

The majority of British shopping centres are located in city centres, usually found in old and historic shopping districts and surrounded by subsidiary open air shopping streets. Large examples include West Quay in Southampton, Manchester Arndale, Bullring Birmingham, Liverpool One, Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow and Eldon Square in Newcastle upon Tyne. In addition to the inner city shopping centres, large UK conurbations will also have large out-of-town "regional malls" such as Meadowhall, Sheffield serving South Yorkshire, the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester and Bluewater in Kent. These centres were built in the 1980s and 1990s, but planning regulations prohibit the construction of any more. Out-of-town shopping developments in the UK are now focused on retail parks, which consist of groups of warehouse style shops with individual entrances from outdoors. Planning policy prioritizes the development of existing town centres, although with patchy success. Westfield Stratford City is the (shopping centre), in Stratford (London), is the largest shopping centre in Europe with over 330 shops, 50 restaurants and an 11 screen cinema and Westfield London is the largest inner-city shopping centre in Europe. Bullring, Birmingham is the busiest shopping centre in the UK welcoming over 36.5 million shoppers in its opening year.

In Hong Kong, the term "shopping centre" is the most frequently used, and the name of a shopping centre in Hong Kong usually contains the word "centre" or "plaza". In Brazil, the most frequently used term is just "shopping" (pl. shoppings), sometimes added with "center", "plaza" or "mall".