City center to regional mall
Subtitle: architecture, the automobile, and retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950
By: Richard Longstreth.
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 504
Subjects: Central business districts -- California -- Los Angeles Metropolitan Area -- History; Retail trade -- California -- Los Angeles Metropolitan Area -- History; Automobiles -- Social aspects -- California -- Los Angeles Metropolitan Area -- History; City and town life -- California -- Los Angeles Metropolitan Area -- History
Description: Ten years in the making, City Center to Regional Mall is a sweeping yet detailed account of the development of the regional shopping center. Richard Longstreth takes a historical perspective, relating retail development to broader architectural, urban, and cultural issues.

His story is far from linear; the topics he covers include the emergence of Hollywood as a downtown in miniature, experiments with the shopping center as an amenity of planned residential developments, the branch department store as a landmark of decentralization, the evolution of off-street parking facilities, and the obscure origins of the pedestrian mall as a spine for retail complexes.

Longstreth takes seriously the task of looking at retail buildings - one of the most neglected yet common of building types - and at the economics of real estate in the American city. He shows that Los Angeles in the period covered was a harbinger of American metropolitan trends during the second half of this century. Over 250 illustrations, culled from a wide variety of sources, constitute one of the best collections of old LA photographs published anywhere.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-[471]) and index.