In 2017, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota — the largest mall in the United States —announced a writer in residence. Doing the research for her new book, “Meet Me By the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall,” Lange had her own version of the Santa experience. “The mall was our practice city, training wheels for the real world.”Is there anywhere quite like the mall? Childcare, for one thing – like the nursery at Phoenix’s Park Central Shopping City that offered free babysitting with validation in the 1960s – and employment, too. An emotional history of the mall is also a history of the fuzzy boundaries between commerce and community.

Source: thestar July 24, 2022 08:30 UTC