What Is A Strip Mall?

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@John_Mace

I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t derogatory.

Read the other thread. It started out as connoting sophistication. That was as recently as the 80s and 90s, so not really all that long ago.

Rochester is another city with all the main streets having mixed retail and housing. It was pretty common in the mid-sized cities in the northeast.

Toronto is the city I think of for retail blocks. Every major street, for miles, is retail, especially south of Bloor, but the north-south ones go way north too.

[John_Mace]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Read the other thread. It started out as connoting sophistication.

I read the other thread, but I didn’t see where that was cited. As long as I’ve been hearing the term, I’ve associated it with “down market”.

[guizot]

@thelabdude

It amazes me how threads can run on and on in GQ after a good cite.

Yeah, well the real question is what it means in literature when a location is specifically identified as a “strip mall,” becase as aceplace57 and Rick say:

@aceplace57

A strip mall is becoming a derogatory term. I think of old, run down, dirty places. The landlords rent cheap and do little to maintain the property.

@Rick

Here in southern California…[m]any people consider tham a blight on the landscape.

I think it was in the 80s when development of strip malls exploded in Los Angeles inner-city areas. They were a cheap investment that seemed to promise a quick return, by converting a single gas station or some such into a lot with multiple tenants. However, there never was enough commercial demand for so many stores, and soon many strip mall lots went half vacant, or completely vacant and up for sale, unmaintained and dilapidated. Meanwhile, other–probably more needed–development in the inner cities went undone. (CF, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, by William Whyte.)

On the flip side, many immigrants trying to start restaurants or markets featuring their county’s cuisine can afford the rent and major thoroughfare location only
in such strip malls. Your best dining experiences in L.A. are going to be in places like this–places with great food and reasonable prices before the LA Times discovers them.

[tumbleddown]

@yabob

So at what point does a “strip mall” become a “shopping plaza”?

I’ve always considered a plaza to be something that isn’t shaped like a strip, usually stores clustered around a central courtyard/circular roadway. One prime example would be The Grove in Los Angeles (see a map of the property).

@Mr_Downtown

“High street” areas where individually owned shops front directly on the footpath are rare in the US, almost unknown outside Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. Other US cities may have a single small “uptown” area with a block or two of such shops–many of them taverns.

In the greater Pittsburgh area I can think of ten of them, plus Downtown. We’re not hurting for walkable areas where you can take care of your body head to toe (medically, aesthetically & sartorially), eat, drink, get your taxes done, see a lawyer, buy a hammer, buy a watch, buy a wig…

[Ken001]

Thanks everyone for your interesting replies on what I thought was an embarrassingly trivial question. I’m not even certain why it bothered me but time and time again protagonists in books stop at strip malls. I gleaned an impression that these were outlying and slightly downmarket places but sometimes they have offices which seemed out of sync.

Much clearer now.

[guizot]

@Ken001

…what I thought was an embarrassingly trivial question. I’m not even certain why it bothered me but time and time again protagonists in books stop at strip malls.

It’s an excellent question, and probably it bothered you precisely because writers only use the term when they’re trying to convey something about the location. I’d probably want to know what it really means–what does it signify–when a character in New Zealand literature goes to a “dairy,” for example, as opposed to some other kind of shop.

[GovernmentMan]

typical strip mall:

[Ken001]

@guizot

I’d probably want to know what it really means–what does it signify–when a character in New Zealand literature goes to a “dairy,” for example, as opposed to some other kind of shop.

Dang! We used to have a dairy in the cowshed. With a cream separator. http://dairyantiques.com/Cream_Separators_2.html And a churn.

No wait - you mean a dairy?? Oh well that’s a different beast altogether. A corner shop. Usually a sole proprietor working incredible hours, often Indian and Pakistani proprietors. Equivalent to a 7/11.
Joking aside, that is an excellent example Guizot. Thank you.