Retail oxymoron

By twist of fate the shopping centre market in Poland took off at the same time as the first few anti-consumption organisations. At the end of the 1990s, a strong narrative was gaining ground critical of the Western lifestyle, its model for spending free time and its cultural norms. It was also the time of the first anti-globalisation movements. Literature castigating the consumerist society, accusing it of wallowing in shallow and worthless preoccupations was also en vogue. In such a prevailing zeitgeist, the image of the shopping centre as an icon of consumerism could not go unscathed. The attitude of the Catholic Church was to defend traditional days off from work and this, combined with the criticisms of those who accused malls of killing off small-scale retail, also left a deep mark. This damage to the reputation of malls was further weakened by the activities of developers. A dozen or so years ago the main trend in mall design usually involved the construction of fenced-off facil