Shopping malls were a major trend in the early 1980s and '90s, when almost every major city around the world began investing in massive, climate-controlled retail complexes complete with food courts and movie theaters.
In Brazil, this shopping mall boom as a development model still persists in major cities and even in the country's interior. Shopping malls have acquired crucial importance for the development and maintenance of the logic of capital. Every city that "develops" has one or more malls woven into its urban fabric.
However, the shopping mall model as we know it is subject to several major criticisms that warrant attention:
