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23 <br />. , <br />• <br />The mall aims to please visitors of all ages, including some (like the author's son, <br />left/ too young to own a credit card. The LEGO Imagination Center (abovel <br />attracts children; various bars and restaurants attract an older crowd. <br />Nolan, is to use the mall as a learning <br />laboratory for everything from early child- <br />hood through adult education. <br />Community facilities like the school, <br />the nondenominational Mall Area Reli- <br />gious Council, the mall's performance <br />spaces for community events, and its <br />lively (and sometimes disorderly) nightlife <br />have led some observers to speculate <br />that this and other malls are becoming <br />more like real cities. Architecture critic <br />Witold Rybczynski suggested in a May <br />1993 article in Atlantic Monthly that the <br />shopping mall now fulfills so many civic <br />functions that it "is poised to become a <br />real urban place," lacking only some form <br />of permanent housing to provide a resi- <br />dent population. <br />Others would not go so far. Weiming <br />Lu of the Lowertown Redevelopment Cor- <br />poration is encouraged by the mall's <br />"reconcentration of land uses," and he <br />points to the need for high-density hous- <br />ing combined with pedestrian and transit <br />linkages to reinforce the mix of uses. But <br />he thinks the controls that the mall im- <br />poses on both visitors and tenants tend to <br />stifle the individual expression and ca- <br />pacity for change that distinguish a true <br />city. <br />Its name suggests that the Mall of America <br />aspires to be a kind of national Main <br />Street, and its unique combination of shop- <br />ping and entertainment may prove to be <br />just the right formula for attracting the <br />recession-scarred consumers of the '90s. <br />On the other hand, -the mall's size and <br />noise level may overwhelm would-be shop- <br />pers and send local patrons elsewhere for <br />their quick shopping trips. The mall's <br />success will depend not only on its own <br />enterprise but on changes in the retail <br />industry generally. <br />In any case, it's a place worth keeping • <br />an eye on. <br />Suzanne Rhees is a planner who lives in Minne- <br />apolis. She is the author of Reinventing the <br />Village (PAS Report 430. <br />