Joyful, comforting and air-conditioned: The shopping centre is a gift to us all

When organising a catch-up with someone, it’s commonly expected that you will meet for coffee, grab a drink, get something to eat or go for a walk. These are the options we have deemed socially acceptable and, for the most part, everyone seems fine with the system in place.

The suggestion of meeting at the local shopping centre is less common. Despite being the ideal place to eat, drink, walk and talk, the humble suburban shopping centre has fallen out of favour.

I experienced this first-hand recently when attempting to lock in a catch-up with a friend. We spent several texts agreeing on a date before working on a location. As is often the case, we both pitched for home-ground advantage without much success.

Far from being a soulless shell, the humble shopping centre is a comforting, climate-controlled hug.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Eventually, I did the sensible thing and suggested a spot that was geographically between us both (and spiritually where I feel most comfortable): the local shopping centre. The response was not only devastating but revealing: Haha, what are we, 15?

Oh, to be 15 again. We were 15 in 2006 when the shopping centre was experiencing its last days of cultural relevancy.

Back then, the brick-and-mortar meeting point was popular with everyone from horny teenagers to bored old people. A place where exhausted new parents could vaguely wander about, judgement-free, and passive-aggressive shop assistants felt at home.

You didn’t go to the shops because you needed something; you went because you didn’t know what else to do.

It has been this way since 1956 when the world’s first ‘shopping mall’ was built in Minnesota (Australia followed a year later with Brisbane’s Westfield Chermside), and we all realised how pleasant climate-controlled retail spaces were.

By the 1980s and 1990s, mall culture was peaking in the US while here in Australia pretty much every suburb had their own Westfield, each with a unique flavour.

My local was Westfield Miranda (also known as Miranda Fair) in the Sutherland Shire, which was, at one point, the largest Westfield in the world. Or was it the Southern Hemisphere?

This is peak culture, no add to cart, no click and collect. Just people wandering around aimlessly at the shops.

Anyway, it was enormous and an even bigger source of pride for those who lived near it.

With the kind of blissful ignorance that only existed in the pre-internet era, we browsed, shopped, loitered, and hung out — a golden age of killing time.

You could lose an entire day being dragged to department stores by your mum - Grace Bros for most of us, David Jones for the fancy - before eventually being allowed to go into one cool shop and spend your pocket money.

There were trips to Best & Less for clothes you’d never wear and Back To School-themed visits that ended in tears because the expensive shoes everyone else had were “totally unnecessary.”

The high point arrived when you reached the promised land, a dimly lit food court offering everything from Indian and Chinese to McDonald’s and KFC.

Everything tastes better when you’re eating in a food court like this.

Together, we co-existed in a bubble that burst spectacularly in the late 2000s and 2010s when the internet came along to ruin everything. Suddenly, online shopping was a thing; the thrill of finding the perfect outfit in store was replaced by a modern form of excitement: a delivery from The Iconic.

Naturally, this spurred a raft of think pieces heralding the death of retail and, by extension, the end of the shopping centre. But in our rush to click Add To Cart, what were we subtracting from our lives?

The internet has already taken so much from us, so we cannot, should not, and will not let the shopping centre go the way of the Gregory’s street map because we need it more than we realise. Side note: the Gregory’s never got confused in a tunnel or dropped out of range.

It is the comforting Third Place that American urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg referred to in his seminal 1989 book, The Great Good Place. Oldenburg’s theory argued that we have a home (first place) and the workplace (second place), but to be a high-functioning society we require a neutral third place, one that encourages civic engagement and a sense of community.

And if it also happens to have one of those weird kiosks that exclusively sell phone cases, that’s a bonus.

If we just let it, the shopping centre could become the great comforter of the modern world once more. An indoor oasis with atrium ceilings and an unidentifiable aroma that only feels soulless until all the souls show up.

Ultimately, we may think of shopping centres as taking our hard-earned money, but they’re providing something you can’t put a price on: a brief respite from the world, a sense of togetherness, and a Muffin Break. If you want to discuss this further, well, you know where to find me.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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