Title: City center to regional mall
First published: 1997
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.
Subjects: Social aspects of Automobiles, Social aspects, Central business districts, Retail trade, Automobiles, City and town life, History, Automobiles, social aspects, Los angeles (calif.), history
Places: California, Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
LC classification: HF5429.5.L7 L66 1997