The ‘Stranger Things’ About Retail and Cities

By Aurora Jácome

Actually, if we look back into history, beginning with the Greek Agora, a public forum and marketplace, and followed by the later (and still in force) souks and bazaars of North African and Western Asian countries, concentrating independent retailers along covered walkways, these early formats were a system of relationships, information exchange, and most importantly, the substrate to grow a sense of community.

Its evolution later brought the mom-and-pops, grocery stores, commercial boulevards, arcades, department stores, and many other retail formats that kept evolving along with and within the cities, bringing private spaces for commercial activity that melted organically with the public structures and forested social interactions amongst citizens.

Recent history: The mall, an approach based on convenience

Image from https://sciencefiction.com/2019/06/21/listen-to-starcourt-from-the-score-soundtrack-to-stranger-things-3/.

Actually, in an exercise of not foresting my social activity, I have recently been locked in my living room watching the third season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” show, which has always been very focused on re-creating, for the delight of my generation who lived these times as teenagers, how life looked in America during the ’80s.

In this new season, one of the main shooting sets is The Starcourt Mall, a shopping mall that has become the main playground of the teenagers. It’s a space that looks more exciting, convenient, and fun to the town’s residents, but at the same time, it’s sucking-up all commercial life from the town center, suddenly making most local businesses unsustainable.

Why the screenwriters wanted to recall this well-known situation in the first episode is not fully clear to me, but if we forget fiction and look back into history, specifically during the late ’50s when malls started popping up across the USA, it was a time when the middle classes started to become wealthier and mass consumption was a new reality. The convenience of having everything one might need in a single place, with nice air conditioning, covered plazas, and a parking lot, made total sense. Not to mention that in terms of logistics and business optimization, this model was much more efficient than traditional shops.

So, one might think that malls were inevitable, but what no one could foresee during its apogee, is that with this new model, a new “public” space was being created. These were spaces that were actually private, far from people and local administrators’ control, spaces which replaced the true public spaces and other associated activities in the city centers that played a vital role in the social and economic life of communities.

Also, the fact that this new “public” space was placed on the outskirts of town, almost only accessible by car, worked against what is defined in sociology as the main measure of public space: accessibility, both physical and psychologically. With the migration of the social spaces far from public transportation, the access for people without a car became limited, and so, exclusivity was encouraged, generating social segregation.

In 1994, in a New Jersey Supreme Court case regarding the distribution of political leaflets in shopping malls, the court declared that “shopping malls have replaced the parks and squares that were traditionally the home of free speech,” siding with the protesters “who had argued that malls constitute a modern day Main Street.” Chief Justice Robert N. Wilentz characterized the mall as the new space of public gathering, which provides similar conditions to those found in downtowns or town squares.

Now that I think about it, maybe the Stranger Things creators decided to set the action in this environment as a form of metaphor (spoiler alert) in which The Starcourt Mall is the new place where the Mind Flayer monster lives, transforming Hawkins humans into soulless zombies, in the same way as shopping malls sucked the life of the cities and took its inhabitants to the “upside-down” of a nonsense life of consumerism.

We might be in favor of or against malls, but it is proven, as with the real Starcourt Mall (an abandoned mall in Georgia) that it is a now-obsolete model that had a tremendous impact on how cities evolved during the last 60 years. It was the first time in history in which the social and commercial activity of town was privatized and displaced to the outskirts.

City as shopping mall

I’ve been talking about the displacement of city centers to suburbs as one of the main tensions brought about by malls, but the truth is, that many American towns were so “new” at these times, that there wasn’t an old historic center as we consider in Europe. Or, if there was one, it was not old enough to retain as much cultural heritage and interest for shoppers.

Interestingly, even before the invention of the malls as we know them today, and probably aware of this particularity of American towns, J. C. Nichols built in 1922 The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, USA, (the first shopping center in the world designed to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile). It recreated a historic south European old town, including a replica of La Giralda de Sevilla bell tower. So, in this case, it was just the opposite: The center was not moved outside, but “synthesized” inside the city. Interestingly, the place is still there in full force.

Things went even further if we think about examples like Las Vegas, which in the late 40’s was designed as a complete shopping city. Las Vegas was a place in which the main purpose was — and still is — offering entertainment and limitless consumption. But residential and service areas were considered secondary and placed near the suburbs.

The world kept evolving. An Americanized Japan was followed by the more recent economic growth of East Asian economies. In cities like Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Shanghai, a young shopping culture exploded into new retail-city models, like the huge urban shopping malls which are built in the city center areas and main stations. These infiltrate into subterranean galleries that connect seamlessly with the transport system as if they’re living creatures.

“Once, shopping needed the city to survive, Now, the urban has been reduced to a theme of shopping,” Koolhaas wrote 20 years ago.

Sze Tsung Leong, one of the book’s co-authors, notes that “Not only is shopping melting into everything, but everything is melting into shopping.”

If we look around, one can see how this became true. Nowadays shopping is everywhere. You can shop in museums, train and subway stations, and airports. Shopping has infiltrated, colonized and even replaced almost every aspect of the urban life.

I live in Barcelona, where we have suburban malls. Outlets resemble Mediterranean villages in the same way as the Country Club Plaza did 100 years ago. There are department stores, and souks and street markets. But if I think about true first-class commercial activity here, what comes to my mind is the city center and its commercial avenues: Passeig de Gracia with its fashion boutiques, Rambla Catalunya, Portaferrissa Street, Les Rambles, and the old quarters.

One might think that the nonsense of previous eras is gone, and there is a trend to recover the Agora and the souks’ spirit where life and culture mixed with shopping in the downtowns. But in reality, Barcelona’s center has been so transformed by the exponential growth of tourism, and shops and big firms, that locals, old shops and service facilities have been forced out, incapable of paying the high rents. Sadly, the public spaces are again private.

I wonder if every central public space is doomed to become a consumer space full of humans with shopping bags who don’t interact with each other, but rather with brands? Did you ever find yourself in a shopping area of a city and suddenly can’t recall where in the world you are? I have.

The role of technology

Of the most influential factors that contributed to the achievement of such a high level of retail revolution, technology and its industry were among the top three.

The development and availability of new building materials, like the cast iron and large panes of glass brought about in the 19th century, made the invention of modern storefronts possible. This allowed for showcases of products to be unattended, and exposed goods to pedestrians passing by. Basically, these materials allowed for “window shopping” to become a pass time. The materials impacted communities at an urban scale, changing the look of some historic buildings and consequently the overall image of cities.

In the late ’40s, two technologies contributed to the development of the department store: escalators and air conditioning. The escalator maximized the use of retail space, putting all stories at an accessible plane. And the air-conditioning enabled big spaces to exist without the need for natural ventilation. This created the perfect environment to spend long hours shopping, and also optimized the profitability of vertical real estate absent of street-level windows.

On the other hand, cars and other forms of private transportation made suburban urbanism and shopping malls possible. Interestingly, for the first time, the scale of the impact was much bigger than previously, changing the urban structure of cities and consequently the lives of their citizens.

Along with materials and new industrial products, other inventions were created to cover the fast-growing demands of retail development. The invention of the credit card in 1920 enabled the future of ultra-digitalization. They allowed consumers to purchase expensive products without having to go the bank for cash withdrawal. Suddenly, department stores were no longer dependent on being close to banks.

Retail meets the internet

With the mass adoption of the internet in the late nineties, a new disruptive force in retail erupted: e-commerce. Some years ago, trends and figures suggested the apocalyptic possibility of brick and mortar to pass away in favor of a fully e-commerce based retail. Years proved that this trend was true, and figures keep showing that many physical stores have closed since the dawn of online retail. Despite the trends, it now appears that physical stores are going to continue to survive for a long time.

Online shopping did not defeat retail, but is dramatically changing the way spaces are being designed and used. Based on the fact that people can buy almost everything online, physical stores are changing up their traditional use for new uses. Now a store is no longer just a store — it’s a club, a cafe, a gallery, creating hybrid concepts to keep consumers engaged in new experiences. Consider the independent bookstore: once a place to wander the stacks, now they’re community hubs with cafes, book launches, various reading clubs, etc. In order to survive, they’ve had to acclimate to the changing needs of communities.

In a paradoxical and apparently desperate way to keep digital technologies relevant, some big retailers are creating areas in their spaces to browse their products digitally, as if consumers still had no smartphones. This seems like a naive declaration to savvy shoppers: “This is a store, but we are digital too, so stay here.” I wonder if adding touch screens to our already massively digitized lives is an added value to customers. Is it?

Others try to take advantage of social media by adapting their interior design with an Instagram mindset, or installing new photo sets and booths to allow millennials to post branded selfies. To have a bigger marketing impact, spaces are redesigned to appear better in selfies. This disregards the original power of architecture and design to communicate the real values and philosophy of brands. It deflects people’s attention so that it’s focused on their smartphone screen, rather than the space itself. Do we want social networks to dictate the way stores are designed?

The probable future

If we project ourselves some years in the future to look at trends, the promises of virtual and augmented realities, and how retail could be developed in an infinite space that can be accessed from our sofa — and consequently be more convenient than ever — it seems like a great opportunity to gather up more customers and offer them new experiences.

Some days ago I read some news regarding Apple’s intention to use augmented reality to cover cities with “their” content. One could say, “If you don’t like it, just don’t turn on your phone and you won’t see Apple’s universe covering your favorite city.” But consider what happened with other developments, such as online maps. If you are not on Google Maps, you don’t exist. Will that happen with Apple’s augmented reality, too?

What will happen to cities if the physical space has to compete with new, exciting, and more convenient virtual spaces? How will that affect cities? Maybe shoppers will stay at home and Barcelona will be a livable town again? Or will we all be wandering around, randomly looking at our screens, shopping bags in hand?

The preferable future

These are difficult times for everyone, and no one seems to know what is going on. Companies take desperate steps to survive in a continuously mutating context in which technology dictates the pace. One day you’re the king, the next day you’re out of the field. This is a time in which every day more consumers possess more information than ever before. Consumers can better decode their reality and make value judgments about what they consume, and its impact. Customers increasingly demand responsible and honest brands.

It is up to companies to keep following this same path, taking the same risks, or start doing things differently. More than ever before, retail has the opportunity to continue on as a non-destructive force. It can be designed to help to improve cities, and the life of citizens.

How to do it? It won’t be easy, but here are some shifts that can help in making it happen:

Jump from deterministic trends to a constructivist prospective.

Even though those who live from spotting the trends want us to believe that the future is already written and cannot be changed, history tells the opposite. There is not one future; there are many futures. We must leave the comfort of following familiar trails and learn to design for a better future. The mix of prospectivists, independent professionals on interpreting data plus designers, ready to make things happen, has shown to be a killer combination.

Jump from customer journey to systems thinking.

Covering individual customer satisfaction to make lives easier has proven to have undesirable consequences globally. It is no longer worth designing the customer journey of our service as if it was not connected to, or had no impact with the rest of the world. It’s becoming increasingly necessary to incorporate methodologies such as systems thinking to have a more complete view about the impact and possible consequences of our services. That will guarantee less reliance on uncontrollable factors.

Jump from customer-centric to humanity-centric.

Retail is trying to survive and adapt to a present where technology has radically changed consumer habits and society. Those who have created these same technologies tell them how they have to invest in it in order to survive. To break this vicious circle, companies must stop thinking reactively, from panic and irresponsibility. Instead, they should generate new value propositions that incorporate broader, inclusive and forward-looking visions in the design process. They should build paths of their own with the help of technologists, yes. But also philosophers, politicians, and citizens. In short, they should work with everyone who has a relevant role in defining the cities we deserve to ensure a sustainable future.

We can’t predict the future of retail, but what we can do is gather strength and work together to bring back some value to the people and their communities. We can build retail strategies that serve the city, and not the other way around. Reflecting back to what went down in Stranger Things at the hallowed Starcourt Mall — we don’t want the Mind Flayer to take over our cities to turn them upside-down, right?