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A review by cwalsh
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
4.0
A really fascinating look into the history and current state/demise of the shopping mall. The first half of this book deals with the inner workings and creation of the mall (location, structure, architecture) while the later half deals with the mall as sociological structure (both in pop culture and in real life).
While a book like this can sound dry, it remained engaging throughout... namely because of Lange's prose:
"The common ground of all ruin porn is waste. A waste of materials, a waste of design, a waste of imagination. I can't admire the lines of a building if I am thinking about how its emptiness brings the city down, block by block, crime by crime, into a vicious cycle of limited economic opportunity. Any travelers in the world of dead malls must ask themselves whether they are prepared to fight to put people back into the gutted buildings, or it they merely intend to pick over the aesthetic bones."
While a book like this can sound dry, it remained engaging throughout... namely because of Lange's prose:
"The common ground of all ruin porn is waste. A waste of materials, a waste of design, a waste of imagination. I can't admire the lines of a building if I am thinking about how its emptiness brings the city down, block by block, crime by crime, into a vicious cycle of limited economic opportunity. Any travelers in the world of dead malls must ask themselves whether they are prepared to fight to put people back into the gutted buildings, or it they merely intend to pick over the aesthetic bones."