| Contents > Perceptions of Shopping Centre Development in Sydney: a celebratory or more complex history?by Bailey Matthew |
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Some problems Posed by Shopping Centre Development
Whilst shopping centres accommodated cars by providing parking, they also encouraged their usage. Opening advertisements for both Top Ryde and Roselands declared that ‘All Roads’ led to the respective centres. Detailed maps were provided on how to approach them from any part of the metropolitan area (Northern District Times, 13 November 1963; The Torch, 6 October 1965). With the popularity of shopping centres, new concentrations of traffic congestion were formed. This became an ongoing problem, exacerbated as centres continued to expand over time. In some cases it was worsened further, such as at Miranda Fair in the early 1970s, when centre employees were barred from using car parks, forcing them onto the street, clogging up local roads and reducing the parking available for other local businesses (Sutherland Shire Council minutes, 1971).
The community facilities promised in centre developments did not always materialise, and if they did they did not necessarily last (Kingston, 1994, p. 98). Even childminding was phased out by some centres in the 1970s. When Warringah Mall’s service was cut in 1973, one protesting mother wrote to the Manly Daily:
Surely in the wisdom of the planners of the multi-million dollar redevelopment of the Mall, allowance could have been made for one the large stores or the tenants in general to subsidise the rental and maintenance of a safe place to leave children for one or two hours at a reasonable cost to the poor rattled mums of Warringah (Judd, 1965).
The provision of facilities inside shopping centres might also come at the cost of existing amenities. Chatswood Chase, for example, was built over the top of a Kindergarten, Senior Citizens Centre and Community Aid Centre when council sold their land to David Jones in 1975 (Middleton, 1975; Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 1976; North Shore Times, 6, 13, 20 August 1975). The Chase then stepped in with marketing to establish itself as the new community focus, combining its first birthday promotions with the long-running Willoughby festival. The local paper reported that the two had ‘been interwoven to give the community one giant celebration’, that demonstrated the importance of The Chase ‘to the day-to-day community life of the North Shore… naturally birthday bargains [were] a feature’ (North Shore Times Weekend Edition, March 11, 1984, p. 18).
Whilst the early childminding services were enthusiastically embraced, they were a limited service. They still didn’t offer a solution to women who wanted to work, and to use them, women were confined within a commercial, largely internalised, consumer oriented environment. In this way, the big shopping centres became the built environment’s very tangible expression of the cultural, social and economic role that the post-war housewife was obliged to fulfil – her ‘value as housewife and mother reflected in her success as a consumer’ (Game & Pringle, 1997, p. 205).
In the post war period, the mantra of full employment became economic orthodoxy (Hudson, 1974, p. 534). In this environment, shopping centres were welcomed as generators of growth and providers of jobs. An appreciation of the benefits of retail employment, though, must be conditioned by an understanding of its nature. During the second half of the twentieth century, the modernisation typified by the big regional centres changed retail employment in some fundamental ways. Self-service led to deskilling. Specialist product knowledge was lost, replaced with advertising, and the tasks of shop assistants gradually reduced to what Game and Pringle have described as factory-like functions. The period also saw an increased casualisation of the workforce, enhanced by the deregulation of trading hours, and innovations in time-management analysis that led to a requirement for flexible staff at peak selling periods (Game & Pringle, 1983, pp. 75-78). These changes in working conditions saw a decline in the status of retail employment for men, encouraging them to move to other industries, and opening up opportunities for women at the lower end of the trade. The lower status of the job was in this way one of the preconditions for the increase of women’s employment in it (Game & Pringle, 1983, p. 63).
The employment created by shopping centres also came at the cost of other local jobs as surrounding retailers were hit by the new and highly organised competition (Botany and Randwick Sites Development Bill, 1982, p. 1020). Despite planning calls for integration between existing retail and new centres (Report of the Town Planner,1963), there was little effort made in this direction. The internalised design of regional centres was a deliberate exclusion of outside retail that in Sydney was enhanced by their locations on the opposite side of railway tracks, or at the far end of existing retail strips. Periodic refurbishments and expansions were designed to attract higher percentages of an areas’ retail dollar. And there are reports of a consistent and clearly voiced philosophy amongst shopping centre management to kill off external competition (John, personal communication, April 10, 2006). Evidence for the impact of major centres on surrounding retail can be amply provided by a stroll through Parramatta, Hornsby, Bondi Junction, Gosford or any number of older shopping precincts throughout Sydney.
As retail strips lost ground and shopping centres expanded, the power differential between centre operators and small retailers grew accordingly, leading to high rents, a lack of transparency in the leasing process, numerous claims of misrepresentation and dropouts, bankruptcies and business failures for many independent stores.
ConclusionShopping centres, then, emerged as a result of changing urban patterns driven by the proliferation of the motorcar, and a shortage of retailing in the suburbs. They incorporated the attractions of department stores and supermarkets alongside welcome community facilities, and housed modern consumer goods in convenient and appealing environments. They brought jobs and encouraged economic growth. But they also created traffic congestion of their own, supported existing gender roles, introduced new levels of commercialism to community social life, and impacted negatively on many small and local retailers. Developers made great profits, leaning heavily, at times inappropriately, on local governments to have their projects approved. And they continually positioned their centres as community hubs whilst calculating how best to profit from those same communities. Industry marketing and lobbying, backed up with public support from governments and media, emphasised these benefits but glossed over problematic aspects of development. This ability of the industry to write its own history, to influence public perception, is a timely reminder of the importance of academia in providing critical analysis of our social environment.
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| Contents > Perceptions of Shopping Centre Development in Sydney: a celebratory or more complex history?by Bailey Matthew |