A shopping hub or centre, is a collection of retail, entertainment and service stores designed to serve products and services to the surrounding region. Traditionally, shopping hubs were called bazaars or marketplaces which were generally an assortment of stalls lining streets selling a large variety of goods.
The modern shopping centre is now different from its antecedents, the stores are commonly in individual buildings or compressed into one large structure (Mall).
The first modern shopping mall was The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City which opened in 1922, from there the first enclosed mall was designed by Victor Gruen and opened in 1956 as Southdale Centre in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Malls peaked in America in the 1980s-1990s when many larger malls (more than 37,000 sq m in size) were built, attracting consumers from within a 32 km radius with their luxurious department stores.
There are different types of malls around the world, the Superregional malls are very large malls that contain at least five department stores and 300 shops, this mall can appeal to a broad radius (up to a 160-km). A regional mall can contain at least two department stores or "anchor stores".
The smaller malls are often called open-air strip centres or mini-marts and are typically attached to a grocery store or supermarket. The smaller malls are less likely to include the same features of a large mall such as an indoor concourse, but are beginning to evolve to become enclosed to comply with all weather and customer preferences.