Public Spaces and Shopping Malls

Cities and public open space, an interaction point where the

individual and the society are getting together who are all kinds of
social class and cultural. People with very different characteristics are
places that serve as a meeting point for the society. Particularly
public spaces have an important mission in the generation of cities.
Habermas says that public space is the area where public opinion is
created in social life. According to N. Schulz, public space is a place of
encounter and it is an “microcosmos” that envelops and brings
people closer but, in our time, public space is described as physical
environments that offer public space life and publicly accessible.
Jean Baudrillard defines the concept of shopping mall as
aestheticization and culturalization of consumption and spatial
reflection and synthesis of consumption activities. This concept has a
similar points with Schulz’s explain. These places give some physical
places to people for gathering them. Owing to this, shopping mall
become a public space and interaction point but, in my opinion,
nowadays we are understanding the word of “public space” such as
shopping mall. The design of shopping malls as urban open spaces
revealed this situation.
Within the logic of the unique cultural culture of capitalism in the
20th century, everyday life has been divided into many sections as
entertainment and recreation. With this partition, not only the
specified activities but also the places where these activities took
place started to separate from each other. According to Gruen and
Smith, structures such as shopping mall could become new public
spaces for cities because of commerce which is one of the most basic
daily life activities they host. With the different activity of the city,
becoming meaningless by dividing into areas the idea of the city
center can be filled with the urban space that will be created in the
shopping malls. It can assume the task of being a place today which is
the city squares in history made.
Shopping malls that Gruen envisaged to serve as a social and
cultural center beyond being a commercial center for contemporary
urban life centers today become “consumption cathedrals” where
not only consumer goods but also social and cultural activities
mentioned above are consumed. Overly rational the speed of the
production system can be increased and consumption to ensure its
continuity the turnover rate was increased behind concepts such as
fashion, impermanence and the place where consumption is
constant. It isn’t the public space of urbanities who have neither time
nor willing to discover.
 Nowadays, shopping malls have become surreal spaces where
non-architectural elements such as carousel, ice rink which have no
semantic and spatial relation with each other. The public relationship
established within these spaces like the artificial world built in the
shopping center lost his own specialties. As Baudrillard said, in
today’s public venues which is shopping malls has also lost its public
relationship, spontaneity and it has become typical. Public relations
are also organized in their center. Speeding up the social
development, fast economic changes in urban-public spaces has
brought the change of its qualities. Public space characteristics of city
centers malls mimicking especially small creates new urban centers in
the cities. This new shop is an imitation public space spatial
organization of the centers public as if it possesses the characteristics
of space qualities although it seems that it was not designed in
accordance with these principles. It cannot create an alternative to
social functions.
Lifestyle centers that purpose is not just to create a shopping place
but also to provide a real bazaar-city center experience for the citizen
tries to be a community center that takes the places of public spaces.
Today’s city dwellers leave city squares instead of lifestyle centers
gathered in the squares, the streets of the city walking around the
streets of these areas that resemble and most of their time in these
areas spend. Environmentally oriented street, textures and squares
with its design these new city center imitations that create a feeling
outside in the world. It should include openness, accessibility,
security and social integration of public space for everyone and these
features should also be taken into consideration while designing.
Urban space in shopping malls -the integrity of shopping space
outdoors although it is a correct approach to provide with the
creation of public spaces, the current examples of the integration of
this fiction with the city are often insufficient they remain. Shopping
malls in cities are generally independent of their surroundings,
individual considering and designing them as structures disrupts the
integrity of the city. It causes places that cannot establish physical
and social relations it is. At this point, urban design discipline gains
more importance. Social and natural environment, urban identity,
sustainability should be considered when preparation of shopping
center projects.
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