Mall And A Downtown Shopping Area example essay topic

Shopping - Losing the Hometown Feeling In the city of Columbia, there is one mall and a downtown shopping area called "The District". In The District, shoppers can find many one-of-a-kind shops like Leo's. Leo's is a second hand clothing store where a person can find vintage clothes to purchase or rent. There are also many different kinds of restaurants to soot anyone's palette. The District also offers several different fine appeal stores. Unlike The District, at the mall shoppers will find all the major chain stores and a caf'e court for dining.

With the development of the suburban malls in the late 1950's, shoppers have been spending their money in malls instead of in downtown business districts. This is even true of shoppers who have to go out of their way to shop in the malls; they will bypass downtown stores (which they might have gotten to by convenient bus) to drive to the brightly light and weather-free shopper-heaven. The result, some people claim, is the demise of the central urban commercial district, Downtown. But why are Americans so easily lured to shop in malls in the first place? People do not like weather. They like to be indoors whenever possible, even on nice days, and they are willing to pay a premium to be protected from the elements.

If they could find someone who could afford it, they would even put their sports stadiums under a gigantic bowl. Being able to shop in a covered indoor facility has attracted many people. With downtown shopping people are exposed to the cold, heat, rain and snow, which detours many shoppers. They love to stay indoors for a day of shopping, perhaps never seeing the sun from the time they first enter until they leave, hours later, relieved of money, oxygen, and much more. Shoppers in the United States love convenience.

During the crush of major holidays, malls offer plenty of convenient free parking. The mall offers plenty of docking points - usually next to major commercial outlets - for cars that circle in search of the closest slot and an easy entrance unlike the downtown shopping experience in which a shopper usually has to drive around for ever just to find a parking space and then have to continue to plug a parking meter with coins in fear of getting a parking ticket. The mall offers an extraordinary variety of products under its one gigantic roof. Specialty stores and boutiques offer items that people do not realize they need until they are put under the spell of brightly lighted, beautifully furnished window after window of beautiful things. Malls are built to respond to Americans' insatiable desire for stuff either that, or a generation of Americans has been genetically engineered to respond to the sellers of stuff. Either way, it works.

Yet downtown shopping areas have even more specialize stores and one of a kind stores, locally owned and operated. Shopping downtown one might find things a bit more expensive and limited on product selection. To many the mall feels safe: it is well lite, warm, dry, and busy. Senior citizens are invited to do their walking exercises there in the early hours; physically challenged people easily meander the smooth floors with no curb or stairs businesses in motorized carts; children are amused by clowns and fed at convenient cafeterias in the Food Court, on the other hand, the downtown shopping is often in sad repair.

Parking is difficult, if not dangerous, and until you get through the door, it is all outdoors. To get from store to store, shoppers must expose themselves to heat, cold, rain, snow. There are sometimes solicitors to fleece a person of change before they even get into a store. If there is a plan here, it is not evident to most shoppers. Where is the information kiosk with a cordial, well-informed attendant to direct you to the nearest clothier, jeweler, fast-food outlet, or bathroom? Is there a bathroom?

What is left in the American Downtown to recommend it to shoppers? Practically nothing. Nothing, that is, unless you regard as important the notion that the businesses you give your money to should be owned by people, families, in your own community. There may be chain stores; it seems there has always been a J.C. Penney's and a Sears & Roebuck, Inc. The people who owned the franchise and worked behind the cash register were people you might meet in your own neighborhood.

When you walk into the downtown hardware store, you often feel wood, not vinyl linoleum, beneath your feet. And some old guy, who seemed old when he sold your father the hammer you use today, will sell you nails in a paper bag, weighing them out by the handful until you get the exact number you need, not the number that comes in a sealed plastic box. Next door, in the department store, there will be two women who know you by name and who can't wait to help you find what you need or will let you ruminate among the shelves if you want. In the drug store across the street, the pharmacist knows your aches, pains, and what you have been taking for them the last five years and what upsets your stomach and knows to call your doctor when the prescription does not make sense. The truth is that the American mall grows where it does because someone with enormously deep pockets decides to plunk it down where there used to be woods or a golf course. He surrounds it with hundreds of acres of parking and waits for people to come spend their money, as he knows they will because people will do what mass advertising tells them to do.

Downtown, on the other hand, grew where it did because there was an organic need for it. It was a community's response to a community's needs - neighbors responding to neighbors - and it flourished as the community flourished. If the mall can replace this sense of community, then so be it. Today's malls deserve our affection as well as our dollars. If it can't, then we have gained convenient parking and freedom from the weather at an awful price.