Assignment 6: Hanieh

These are pictures of Mall of Georgia located in Buford County. It was 4 pm, a rainy Saturday in March 23. Mall of Georgia is a very big three-story U-shaped suburban mall consisting of five anchors. The mall has covered and uncovered parking lots. The covered ones were near JCPenney and Belk stores. Dillard’s and Nordstrom were “anchoring” two ends of this mall. Overall, the mall was so crowded. Entering the mall, however, I saw that these two anchors are not as crowded as the rest of the mall. This is maybe because they did not use the tricks mentioned in Crawford article The World in a Shopping Mall: “limited entrances, escalators placed only at the end of corridors, fountains and benches carefully positioned to entice shoppers into stores….” In fact, this is not the case in mall of Georgia; there were three escalators, two at the ends of the mall and one in the middle and there were several stair ways and elevators placed throughout the mall.

The crowded part of the mall was the middle section between JCPenney and Belk stores; food court was there, too. In fact, the main entrance of the mall (with covered parking) was placed in the middle of mall and near these two department stores. Therefore, in this very big mall (which has five big department stores) those tricks of Crawford were not used. Generally, I saw three types of people visiting the mall in a large scale. First, a parent with 2-3 children; they were the most visitors of the mall. Second, groups of teenagers. And third, middle-aged women in groups of 2 or 3. Senior citizens were there in much less numbers than other groups. People seemed not to be in rush for shopping; they were just hanging around, especially teenagers. The stores trapped so many shoppers using a classic trick: big signs of huge discount and reduced prices.

However, as I said before, there were not many people in those two anchors of mall i.e. that part of Dillard's and Nordstrom. In fact, the main part of the mall that attracted most customers was the middle of the mall with covered parking, food court and the two big department stores (Belk and JCPenny).

“At an early stage, malls began to introduce a variety of services, such as movies and restaurants, fast-food arcades, video- game rooms, and skating rinks, which, while still requiring expenditure, signaled the mall’s expanded recreational role. As “mall time’ has become an increasingly standard unit of measure, more and more promotional activities have appeared…” (Crawford, 1992, p. 15). Mall of Georgia also follows these rules and offers similar services. It has a food court, vendor machines, conference center, amphitheater, regal cinemas 3D IMAX theater, Wi-Fi, ATM and so on.

In terms of security, cops could be seen walking and hanging around in crowded corridors where people come and go. Sometimes, however, people ask for help to find place of a store. There were varieties of fun for kids and teenagers as seen in the pictures. The overall environment of mall was so beautiful with tropical plants everywhere, and in a cold rainy day, it was warm and cozy. Finally, there were not so many benches, some were right in front of a store but most were in corridors which linked two sides of the mall.

About the map: red circles show the place of escalators, stairways and elevators.