Major Shopping Malls Research Articles

El papel de los centros comerciales como simulacros de espacios públicos: el centro comercial Centro Mayor, Bogotá, Colombia

Public space is in an integral part of the cultural richness of cities, and an essential element in the functioning of a democratic society. Made up of the networks of streets, sidewalks, parks and plazas, public space is what makes urban centers living entities. Though its importance is consistently recognized around the world, public space in Latin America has held a special role in society. In the context of Colombia, the role of public space has been shaped not only by its function as a gathering space for citizens, but it has been marked by decades of armed conflict. It was in this context in Colombia that the construction of major shopping malls emerged, becoming an increasingly important part of the commercial sector of Colombian cities, and, according to some authors, providing an alternative ‘public' space in which citizens could gather. This study, through a review of the literature and a survey, summarizes some of the changes that have occurred in the urban public realm of Bogota in the past decades, and hypothesizes the role that major commercial centers are playing in the daily lives of the city's residents.

Transaction Costs, Firms’ Growth and Oligopoly: Case Studies in Hong Kong Real Estate Agencies’ Branch Locations

Centuries ago, there were some small scale real estate agency firms in Hong Kong. Many of them were small scale family business. As large scale shopping malls were uncommon at that time, these shops were opened on the streets. Nowadays, the market structure of real estate agency sector is an oligopoly. Ricacorp, Centaline, Century 21, Midland Realty, and Hong Kong Properties are the five major large-scale agency companies in Hong Kong. In the modern era, many of these agency firms open their branches inside the shopping malls beneath the large scale residential estates. To better understand the reasons for this phenomenon in Hong Kong, we have conducted two case studies. The case study of Ricacorp, one of the large-scale real estate agency firms in Hong Kong, shows that over half of the Ricacorp real estate agencies shops are opened in shopping malls that are owned by the major developers in Hong Kong. The second part of the case study explores some of the major shopping malls in Tseung Kwan O, a new town in Hong Kong. We find that many shopping malls have similar “content” and appearance because they have similar branded shops. Secondly, the agency firms also open their shops in different malls owned by the same developers. We therefore propose that the oligopoly market structure is caused by two factors: 1) lower transaction costs are incurred when the large scale agency owners negotiate with the mall owners in settling the terms of contracts: A) the mall owners do not need to draft separate contracts for the different agency companies. One piece of contract (or more or less the similar terms of contracts) fits all the agency branches owned by one single firm. B) there is no need to search for background information on each company if the shopping malls are contracting with a single agency company. C) By looking at the other shopping malls, the shopping mall designers can gather information and predict the success of the tenant mix easily. 2) Modern shopping centres usually locate below the towers of residential buildings. By opening the agency firms inside these malls, the consumer’s search costs can be lowered. Despite both the small and large scale agency firms know that these shopping malls can help them secure better business returns, the large-scale companies can easily build up closer relationships with the mall owners (due to factor 1) find it easier to rent their units at a lower rent while the smaller firms find it hard to expand in the New Town’s shopping malls. These small firms are forced to stay in lower profit margin regions in old estates where there are only street shops without large scale developer’s renting administration. Therefore, it is sufficient to conclude that the shopping mall has imposed a relative higher costs to new comers should they wish to enter the real estate agency market in new town area.

Syndromic Surveillance in Bioterrorist Attacks

The article by Nordin et al. (1) in this issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases describes the use of syndromic surveillance to detect inhalational anthrax resulting from a hypothetical covert release of Bacillus anthracis spores at a major shopping mall. This study is an important evaluation of syndromic surveillance's utility in detecting an inhalational anthrax epidemic against a background of real patient presentations. Based on historical clinical data from a large health maintenance organization (HMO), the authors evaluated the sensitivity of a syndromic surveillance system to detect an incident by season of the year, day of the week when the release occurred, and attack rate in mall patrons. Although numbers of persons exposed and becoming ill, as modeled in the study, are not specified, the effect can be inferred from the specified methods. On the basis of information from the mall's Web site (2) and the methods stated in the article, the number of cases associated with a 15% attack rate in mall visitors (115,000 daily average) and workers (12,000) would be ≈19,000 (if no additional exposures occurred after day of release). Of these patients, 59% would be from the metropolitan area in which the mall was located, an additional 6% would reside within a 150-mile radius of the metropolitan area, and the remainder would be from more distant points, including international visitors. Syndromic surveillance, with the HMO patient database, would detect 50% of such incidents by day 5, with only 20% detected by day 4. Lesser attack rates would notably lower the probability of detection. Even more problematic, the syndromic surveillance systems, as modeled, would fail to detect the outbreak in 13% of releases in summer and 47% of releases in winter. Performance would improve markedly with higher attack rates. After detection of an aberrant signal, the occurrence of a syndrome must be investigated to determine the cause, and exposure history of patients must be determined to discover the source. These investigations could result in additional delay before a targeted response could be mounted to prevent more illnesses. Such delays are problematic because the effectiveness of postexposure prophylaxis for inhalational anthrax is related to speed of implementation (3). The authors point out that an astute clinician might diagnose inhalational anthrax in a patient before syndromic surveillance detected that an outbreak of some type was occurring. If, as the 15% attack rate scenario suggests, >100 patients had onset of illness on day 2 after exposure, a correct diagnosis could be established for at least 1 patient by day 4. By this time, hundreds of inhalational anthrax patients would be seen at hospitals, at least 1 day before the syndromic surveillance system, as modeled, would have a 50% probability of signaling the outbreak. The issue now becomes whether or not syndromic surveillance can augment the public health response to an outbreak. For example, if a syndromic surveillance system allowed follow-up of individual cases, it might accelerate case finding and investigation into the source of infection. This potential role of syndromic surveillance was not included in the modeled scenario. Syndromic surveillance systems, of the type modeled by Nordin et al., may be too slow to allow public health officials and policy makers to mount a sufficiently rapid postexposure prophylaxis campaign. Therefore, the ability of many current syndromic surveillance systems to rapidly detect bioterrorist attacks needs to be improved. Another reason to improve syndromic surveillance systems is that the systems may have public health value other than detecting bioterrorist attacks, such as tracking the course of seasonal diseases. We should not forget, however, that clinical care providers will continue to have a critical role in detecting bioterrorist attacks, and communications must be maintained with these first-line sentinels.

Effect of Car Status on Helping Behavior in the Parking Lot

The present study replicates a 1976 experiment by Clark, Matheron, and Matheron concerning the effect of car status on strangers' willingness to turn off a car's headlights. The study was carried out on the parking lot of a major shopping mall in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Status was manipulated using a 1986 BMW and a 1982 Mazda. Analysis indicated no significant differences between the cars for number of shoppers passing by before someone attempted to help. Another dependent measure, latency of helping, was also not significantly different, although in both cases the pattern of means was opposite that obtained by Clark, et al. No significant differences were found for estimated age or sex of helpers. Helpers were most often single or in pairs; groups of helpers were less frequent. The findings are related to research conducted in the 1970s on the effects of victim's status.