Meet Me at the Fountain

This episode, we're going to a place where the lights are bright, the music is dim, and everything smells vaguely like cookies, pretzels, and overpriced lotions. That's right, we're going to the mall. Despite many predictions of near death, the mall is alive and well in many parts of the USA (and parts of the world). For this episode, we discuss Alexandra Lange's 2022 book Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. Lange's architectural history takes us all the way back to the beginning, which in the case of malls, is not that long ago. Starting with early American malls in post-war America, Lange offers a sharp overview of how malls came to be and considers where they are still thriving now. We talk about our own relationships to malls and bigger questions raised by these American institutions. Is the mall a useful third space for communities? Or, are malls simply the best place to be wowed by build-a-bear operations and rollercoasters?
Original air date: January 29, 2024
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