Are out of town shopping centres good or bad?
Extracts from this document...
Introduction
Are Out of Town Shopping Centres Good or Bad Out of town shopping centres are huge buildings which contain hundreds of shops and departmental stores. These shopping centres were invented in America in the 50's and they became very popular. Nevertheless there was only one reason which made out of town shopping centres possible; the mass ownership of the car. This is because the entire scheme was based on people getting into their cars and travelling a long way to get there, and people would do this because there were so many advantages of out of town shopping centres. Shopping centres only started when cars started to be mass produced because lots of people had to have a car for the businesses in the shopping centres to become profitable. ...read more.
Middle
Blue water for example will get around 30 million shoppers a year which generates a huge annual profit of around 800 million. Nevertheless Blue water had a huge capital investment of 400 million but this is gained back after just 6 months sales. Another benefit of Blue water is the amount of jobs it will create. There are over 1000 employees in Blue water at any one time. These jobs not only include the hundreds of shops but the security, restaurants, entertainment, cleaners, managers, admin staff, reception etc. These shopping centres obviously have huge benefits but as said previously the entire scheme of out of town shopping centres is based on cars. ...read more.
Conclusion
So over time they close down. The shops within 6km of Blue water in 1999 (when Blue water opened) had a drop in sales of 70%. This obviously resulted in the closure of virtually all of the shops and left thousands of people unemployed with no money and eventually forced to go and work for one of the large shops chains in Blue water or move elsewhere in search of another place to set up a business. Shopping centres have massive benefits but at a heavy cost of leaving so many people unemployed. Does the good out way the bad? I don't think it does as a lot more people loose out than gain. Therefore the building of Blue water is not justified. ...read more.
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