The Mall was a shaded walk that served as a promenade and the name originated from the broad, tree-lined promenade in St. James's Park, London. Victor Gruen used this concept when he created the "The Shopping Mall" in his aim to make the suburbs more urban, and to demonstrate his Viennese like taste in urbanism. The first was built in 1954 in suburban Detroit, however, Gruen's social idealism in architecture was to be significantly tempered.

Instead "The Mall" became a series of fully enclosed spaces occupied in most cases by national retailers and surrounded by seas of surface parking. A "gigantic shopping machine."

Gruen saw his grand vision for a better built America twisted into something he opposed and when he returned to his native Austria he found that the same diluted visions had traveled back to his home country with him.

People who are lazy can be quite clever.