Food Court of Appeal

In 1938, the Jewish architect Victor Gruen left Nazi-occupied Vienna for New York. When he relocated to Los Angeles a few years later, he was taken aback by the impersonality of the city’s shopping scene. Across Europe, commerce was a communal activity, an opportunity to walk the high streets, admire elegant storefronts, mill about, and perhaps meet new people. In Southern California, consumers drove to their destination, picked up their stuff, and drove home. Gruen set out to change such behaviour by uniting disparate retailers in a single structure built around walkways. These “shopping centres” would be a “restful, even life-affirming” tool to vitalize a lonely activity and restore a sense of community to fractured urban design. His brainchild — the first fully enclosed, climate-controlled mall — would open halfway across the country in 1956, just outside of Minneapolis. The Southdale Center, in the suburb of Edina, continues operating nearly sixty-eight years...