Dead Malls: Suburban Activism, Local Spaces, Global Logistics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract An entire category of urban space, albeit hardly recognized as such, is disappearing across North America. As retail logistics globalizes and big-box power centres replace enclosed shopping malls from the postwar era, a distinct form of social infrastructure vanishes as well. ‘Dead malls’ are now a staple of North American (sub)urban landscapes, and have provoked local activism in many places. But despite popular concern for the demise of mall space, critical urban scholarship has largely sidelined the phenomenon. Much of the disjuncture between popular outcry and academic silence relates to conceptions of ‘public’ space, and specifically the gap between formal ownership and everyday spatial practice. Spatial practice often exceeds the conceptions of designers and managers, transforming malls into community space. This is particularly true in declining inner suburbs, where poor and racialized communities depend more heavily on malls for social reproduction as well as recreation and consumption. In this article we investigate the revolution in logistics that has provoked the phenomenon of ‘dead malls’ and the creative activism emerging that aims to protect mall space as ‘community space’. Taking the case of the Morningside Mall in an old suburb of Toronto, we investigate the informal claims made on mall space through everyday spatial practice and the explicit claims for community space that arise when that space is threatened. We argue that many malls have effectively become community space, and activism to prevent its loss can be understood as a form of anti-globalization practice, even if it never employs that language. Résumé Toute une catégorie de l'espace urbain (rarement reconnue comme telle) est en voie de disparition en Amérique du Nord. Tandis que la logistique du commerce de détail se mondialise et que les méga-zones commerciales remplacent les centres commerciaux de l'après-guerre, une forme particulière d'infrastructure sociale s'éteint. Les sites abandonnés des Dead malls marquent désormais les paysages (sub)urbains nord-américains, suscitant des actions de défense locales. Pourtant, malgré l'inquiétude des habitants pour ces espaces commerciaux, les critiques en sciences urbaines ont généralement marginalisé le phénomène. En grande partie, le contraste entre le tollé des populations et le silence des intellectuels tient au concept d'espace ‘public’, plus précisément au décalage entre la propriété officielle et la pratique spatiale quotidienne. Cette dernière dépasse souvent les idées des concepteurs et gérants, le lieu devenant un espace communautaire. C'est notamment le cas dans les quartiers périphériques du centre qui dépérissent et où des communautés pauvres et racialisées dépendent davantage des malls, tant en matière de reproduction sociale que de détente et de consommation. L'article décrit la révolution logistique à l'origine du phénomène des Dead malls, ainsi que les actions de défense créatives qui visent à préserver l'espace commercial en tant qu'espace communautaire. À partir du cas de Morningside Mall situé dans une banlieue ancienne de Toronto, l'étude s'intéresse aux revendications informelles de cet espace manifestées à travers la pratique spatiale quotidienne, et aux revendications explicites d'espace communautaire qui naissent lorsque cet espace est menacé. Il est montré que de nombreux centres commerciaux sont en effet devenus des espaces communautaires, et que les actions menées pour éviter leur disparition peuvent se comprendre comme une forme de pratique antimondialiste, même si elles ne s'expriment pas en ces termes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.041 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".