1: Public Pedagogy Meet & Greet

There’s a McDonald's around the corner. DQ just past that. Sephora is upstairs, along with H&M. And then there’s that store on the 2nd floor that is obsessed with selling fleece.

The architecture is ho hum. Polished cream floors, marble perhaps, and trimmed with black. Glass and metal abound. The hallways are lined with stores, open in the center, with the upper stories looking down to the lower. Lots of straight lines. Contemporary architecture at its most banal existence. Customers wander around, some with lots of bags, others only window shopping. The average mall.

It exists everywhere you go. The same stores, the same architecture. The same attempts to be edgy, to be trendy, to show sophistication through modernism, or if the developers have some tenacity, postmodernism or deconstructivism. But the final result rarely to give you a sense of place.

The mall is a space where place disappears. Are you in California, Indiana, Florida, or Pennsylvania?

As I sit in this coffee shop—franchise, not independent—everyone is walking towards the food court to purchase dinner. But in State College, it is 5 am.

—

Hanging out at the mall is a teenager's dream. I knew malls were cool, even in the first grade. I remember my confusion on a family vacation to DC when my parents took me to The Mall. Where were all the stores? This was merely a grassy area lined with museums. It was a confusing trip for a six year old. That was the same trip where I told my mom “Sure, I’d like a souvenir print of the seal of the United States!” I was taken aback to find out I didn’t get a picture of a marine mammal, but rather a bird holding some arrows and a plant, encircled with a random assortment of letters that did not seem like English.

I grew up with the largest shopping mall in the United States. It wasn’t always that way. Sometime between kindergarten and high school, the King of Prussia mall decided to take on large scale renovations and additions, until it surpassed the Mall of America by 14,000 square feet of retail space.

In college, I was shocked to find that some malls are one story. But they still have a Bath and Body Works, and usually an Old Navy.

I’ve been to malls in at least four countries. They’re all the same. We bemoan the development of another Wal-Mart, even attend meetings at the town hall to oppose their construction, yet continue to frequent these behemoths, testaments to a lack of originality and a disregard for local culture.

There’s a comfort in conformity. Safety and security in the familiar.

The King of Prussia Mall, in all its retail shopping glory, and the Mall of America, with all its amusement park square footage, is nothing compared to the recently built South China Mall. This mall, the world’s largest mall, is more than twice the size of the Mall of America. They paved paradise, or at least the farms of some local villagers, and put up a parking lot.

And yet it stands empty.

Employees report, day after day, but customers are lacking. The complex, in a town on the outskirts of Guangzhou, was built by civic loyalty, is maintained by hubris, and proves that if you build it, they won’t always come. Especially when there is no highway or airport nearby.

Rumor has it that my city will soon challenge this desolate leader with our own mega-mall, Mall of China. But for now, in the center of town, adjacent to the Olympic complex, this little mall is doing well. On a cold Friday night, people come and go, unaware that they should have maxed out their credit cards last month, flocking to the mall to purchase holiday gifts. Here, the fake trees are still in the process of being taken down, but are already being replaced by lanterns, strings of fake firecrackers, and a cartoon that looks like the Easter bunny in a red Chinese outfit. Like the mall itself, the decorations can’t decide if they are Western, Eastern, or a new amalgamation.







—

The opening of Marina City (百丽广场) was anticipated for months. Could we really have a Dairy Queen in walking distance? An H&M and Uniqlo (the Japanese store obsessed with fleece) in our city? What would we do on trips to Beijing, Shanghai, or Hong Kong? Less two years ago, I pounded the pavement in Shanghai, searching for some Subway sandwich artists. A year later, I squealed with delight when I saw their sign on the first floor of my "French Wal-Mart" Carrefour. I scrounged together my best Chinese to ask the neighboring shopkeeper when they would open; I would be there on opening day. And now Marina City would bring more things from home and open closer to my home.

It was a celebration when the stores opened. But in the middle of the cheers, my pensive friend questioned our joy. What is to become of China? Did we move halfway around the world only to eat Papa John's and Blizzards?

But there is comfort in the familiar. Safety and security when we can anticipate the unknown.

And still, the food court here leaves room for adventure. This no Panda Express; the stalls sell real Chinese, with odes to Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Western food. Tonight, I’d like some butter chicken masala and naan to feast on.


But I don’t think I’d complain if they opened a Chic-fil-A...








Assignment: Introduce self by locating and describing a public sphere of influence in the human-built environment
(e.g., mall, Internet site, television show, listserv, news broadcast, advertisement, artwork, built-environment).