Freedom Shopping

Freedom Shopping investigates how emergent shopping mall typologies in the Middle East are influencing how women participate in the public sphere. As vast shopping, entertainment and leisure complexes glitter the landscapes of cities like Abu Dhabi, Amman and Riyadh,  how have the malls’ particular spatial configuration, programing and positioning within the urban fabric expanded the modes in which women participate in the social, political and cultural life of the city?  My research will trace the evolution of the mall typology from its North American, suburban ancestors to its contemporary reincarnation as an icon of modernization, globalization and consumer freedom in the Middle East.  I will visit malls in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to document and map their spatial organization and programming, and observe how women utilize the mall space both for shopping and non-shopping practices.  Building on these site studies, I will create a public installation and a design studio curriculum that engages architecture and urban design students, as well as the general public in exploring how malls can expand women’s social, economic and political freedoms beyond the freedom to shop. 

Project Background

In the 1950s, the Viennese architect and socialist, Victor Gruen developed the American archetype of the enclosed mall as a safe space for suburban women shoppers.6  In the context of the post-WWII boom in suburban sprawl, Gruen sought to provide a spatial remedy for “female isolation” by offering housewives a sanitized version of the economically and racially polarized city – a secure, central location where their husbands wouldn’t worry about them and they wouldn’t be afraid to bring their children.7  The mall was founded on this principle of giving women a chance to get out of the house and experience the pleasures and safety of a privatized-public space.  Although Gruen’s vision was for an apolitical, consumerist curation of the urban, malls have never been able to entirely extract themselves from urban politics  As malls and their sister spatial products of corporate enclaves and gated communities proliferate in cities, suburbs and Special Economic Zones around the world, they are laboratories to foster idealized subjectivities, rights to public space and utopian conceptions of the city.

In particular in the Middle East – a region playing host to a spectrum of limitations on women’s rights to public space and political expression – the shopping mall, as a space specifically designed to meet women’s consumer and leisure desires – serves as a critical site to observe new market-based forms of democracy and freedom for women.  Beyond commodifying the public sphere, my research will examine how malls becoming transformative spaces for women to pursue non-consumerist forms of social, culture, and political rights.  In other words, beyond the freedom to shop, how has the contemporary mall typology been reinterpreted from its North American origins as a secluded, safe haven to spatialize new forms of freedom for women in the Middle East?

Research Methodology
I will visit large-scale, enclosed shopping malls to explore how the mall typology performs as an alternative space for women shoppers to experience economic, political and cultural freedoms.  In Dubai, I will visit the region’s largest malls, including the Mall of Arabia and Dubai Mall.  Also in Dubai, I will meet with consultants from the Middle East Council of Shopping Centers in order to gain an industry perspective on how developers and retailers cater to women shoppers across varying social, political and cultural norms of the region.  Afterwards, I will visit malls in Riyadh,8 Jeddah and Amman including the Al Mamlaka in Riyadh, the Herra Mall in Jeddah and the Mall of Mecca and City Mall in Amman - two malls popular with Iraqi refugees living in Jordan.  In each of these cities, I will document the physical, cultural and economic flows through the malls’ interiors and onto the surrounding urban fabric.  I will also document the malls’ marketing campaigns, and I will conduct informal interviews with women shoppers about how they utilize the mall space for social, political or cultural purposes beyond shopping.

 

Overall, my research will investigate the following urban design, spatial organization and programming questions:

1. 1. How has the mall typology evolved from a secure retreat for American suburban housewives to that of an alternative space for increased women’s mobility and rights in the Middle East? Especially in a restrictive environment like Saudi Arabia, do malls offer a temporary reprieve from the constellation of religious and legal edicts constricting women’s public mobility and expression?  And are malls able to act as gateways to greater political liberalization?
   

2. 2. What instances of re-appropriation or re-purposing of the malls and their resources are women enacting, both within or along the mall’s borders?  How are these alternative spatial practices spilling over and influencing the surrounding urban fabric?
   

3. 3. In the context of regional and global conflicts, how has the mall taken on additional symbolic value as a symbol of stability and democracy?  And can this symbolic capital open up new spaces to meet women’s needs for social services, political expression, and economic development? (For example, in the context of Iraq’s reconstruction process, can foreign investment be leveraged to support both shopping malls and a women’s center?)