Sprol

It’s big, but it’s just a mall. Bloomington, Minnesota is home to the Mall of America.

Douglas Coupland wrote that a mall doesn’t exist on the outside. This is how people can bear to have such an ugly monstrosity as part of their daily life. It’s invisible from the outside.

Think about how large the Mall of America is. You’ve probably heard of it. There are movies and TV shows about it. People travel here from all over the world to stay in a hotel and shop in the hundreds of chain stores, sometimes while attending conferences. They live, work, and play in the mall. It’s an arcology, a completely artificial environment. A mall space. Retail space.

When I volunteered at events on the National Mall in Washington DC, sometimes I would work the information booth. People would come up to us and ask where the National Mall was, exactly. The answer would surprise them and usually begin a confused dialog.

"You’re standing on it. This is the mall right here. This big space."

"So, uh, there are no stores?"

No, only some of the most spectacular museums ever assembled. Art, history, technology, aerospace, all free to the public.

Another question we’d get is "where’s the M-metro station?"

Retail space is leased by the square foot. It’s often ranked using sales per square foot. Square feet of space, of distance. The Mall of America has 2.5 million square feet of leasable retail space, all of which must be watched at all times. It’s apparently quite a challenge.

This space, this tremendous area, only exists inside the mall, made possible by the mall. Before they built the mall there was zero space. Looking from above it looks like would be somewhat difficult to walk to the mall, or bike to the mall. This is a public space you must drive to, take a bus to.

Now think about how large the airport is. Airports are also a place that only exist on the inside for most people. Inside the terminal, the jetway, the aircraft. Inside the overpriced little restaurant. Inside the security checkpoint. Is this space, the airport space, bigger or smaller than the Mall of America? By how much?

Compare the two. Is the airport any bigger relative to the Mall of America you anticipated? Sure, it’s all that space the planes need to take off. Of course.

They measure runways in thousands of feet.