According to cultural theorist Peter Gibian, shopping malls derive from 1920-30s California car culture. The basic mall type -- "a cluster of stores surrounded by seeming acres of barren parking lot" -- stems from Southern California's wide open spaces and endless freeways. However, while malls in places with less temperate climates make sense (snow, rain and cold can be avoided while shopping in them), L.A.'s weather is one of the best in the world. Why are malls so popular in an area that doesn't really need them? Gibian identifies two basic architectural tenets in mall design -- self-containment and introversion. In Los Angeles these qualities provide order and security in a city that is often experienced as disorderly and decentered.

Malls' roofs and temperature controls are part of their self-containment. The "weather" inside is often better than the outside's balmy, sunny climate. It also shields patrons from other features of nature: sun, birds, bugs. These enclosures provide a sense of security and comfort in a city whose landscape and architecture seem to move in the opposite direction. Los Angeles's competing "downtowns," its proliferation of low buildings, its Mediterranean sparseness of foliage, and its freeway system that sprawls in all directions decenters life here. There is no obvious one destination for workers in the morning, for people looking for arts or recreational opportunities, and for shopping. The mall, therefore, provides a locus for retail activity, a specific destination for Los Angelenos rather than them driving from one place to another. Malls provide the convenience of a 5th Avenue or a Union Square that is otherwise lacking in Los Angeles.

The recent trend in malls is to make them "retail entertainment," one stop shopping and entertainment complexes, which increases their capacity for self-containment and introversion. Malls now include mega-plex movie houses, with sometimes 25-30 screens, high-concept arcade complexes and multi-use retail outlets; mall developers now seek to provide not just shopping opportunities, but also places to entertain oneself. The epitome of this is the new Ontario Mills. The mall actively resembles Disneyland; it is laid out in a circle so that customers can rotate through, and it is divided into "neighborhoods," which invokes Disneyland's concept of "lands." There are large video screens positioned throughout the mall, reminiscent of the entertainment in the long lines at any amusement park. At certain points, there are clusters of plastic mushrooms which act as benches -- again invoking a fantasy feel usually associated with Disney. Numerous writers have pointed out how Disney's theme parks are really retail outlets where they push Disney merchandise. But if Disneyland resembles a mall, Ontario Mills is pushing the boundaries between amusement park and mall in the other direction. These malls solidify Los Angelenos' goals of achieving all of life's goals without leaving the safety of one's own sphere. The mall's architecture of self-containment and introversion parallels its customers' needs for these things.

If malls fill a gap in L.A.'s urban landscape, they also act as a locus for multi-ethnic experiences, but only of the most superficial kind. Mall populations often reflect Los Angeles's diversity. At the Beverly Center or Westside Pavilion, chi-chi Anglos from West L.A. can rub shoulders with African-Americans from South Central or Chicanos from East L.A. or Koreans from Koreatown. In theory, malls provide a space of democratic ethnic mixing in a city where racial tensions have been headline news.

This intermingling is an illusion. Mike Davis has documented clearly racist policies among mall police, who will escort people out of the mall if they are deemed unsavory. For example, one of my Chicana students told me how she and three of her friends went to Puente Hills Mall to buy stereo equipment for which her two male friends had $400 each in cash that they had saved for six months. The boys were dressed in baggy oversized jeans, tight white T-shirts, reversed baseball caps, and a smattering of post-pubescent facial hair and were, therefore, identified by mall security as "gangbangers." They were intercepted within three minutes of entering the mall. Despite the youths' protests, and despite, in the most haunting image, the boys showing the two security guards their four crisp new one hundred dollar bills, they were escorted out of the mall and told to never come back.

Some version of this story has been repeated to me many times by students: African-American, Chicano, Asian, and even Anglo. According to Davis there is an hysteric quality to mall security's reactions to teenagers in malls. It seems that all teenagers, dressed in a style that is marketed by MTV as hip-hop, are automatically suspect, particularly if they are boys. In addition, malls that cater to a lower class clientele, like Long Beach Plaza, are always at risk of financial failure; large retail chains, the anchor stores, which are so necessary for a mall's survival, are loath to locate in a working class area. This systematic expulsion of classes of people exposes the ways in which democracy is circumscribed in these malls. For if malls are a symbol of democracy, then the democracy consists almost exclusively of middle-class families, where parents control their children, or where the children are relegated to stores specifically for them -- toy stores, arcades, etc. In this sense, the malls also resemble Disneyland, whose security force is notorious for escorting people, usually unaccompanied teenagers who are deemed to be dressed or acting inappropriately, out of the park. Ontario Mills and Disneyland create new worlds in which all one's needs can be met, but who can have their needs met is not always clear. In this way, for Los Angelenos, malls represent a contained democracy -- they give the illusion of a democracy in an otherwise fragmented city, and yet they protect consumers from the democracy of the street. The mall becomes a microcosm for the world Los Angelenos wish really existed, and it is, finally, L.A. itself -- vast, sprawling, with a lot of room for cars.

Douglas Eisner

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