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It never actually occurred to me before that the structures of various malls can actually say a lot about the crowd that it targets. This was amazing for me because up to this time, I never gave the idea much thought.
I particularly found the comparison of SM malls to Ayala Malls interesting because of the fact that it's close to home, something I can really relate to and because I know that I myself have seen the very same concepts at work in my daily life, or at least when I go to a mall.
Since it was mentioned, I've started to pay attention to the kinds of people in the malls that I go to.
I went to SM to buy a few things from National bookstore last week and decided to look around... True enough, there were people loitering or "making tambay" all over the place. People would look down at the people in the skating rink, none of the nearby benches were empty because there were always people sitting on them, a great majority just staring out into space. People really were coming here just to hang out since not everyone could afford and maybe the major motive for most was to window-shop.
On the other hand, I spent the day with a few friends over the weekend and we decided to have lunch in Greenbelt 3. Again, I decided to look around and "crowd-watch". Although the stores in Greenbelt 3 are actually more expensive than the ones in SM malls, you'll find people inside buying anyway. The benches in the middle of the mall are hardly ever full, which shows that people who to Greenbelt 3 are there to shop and not loiter. If ever they do plan to hang out, of course, they go to the restaurants and coffee shops and this requires money as well.
All in all, it was a fun experience for me even if I mostly did the processing in my mind and I wasn't really able to discuss my thoughts with my friends since they were busy discussing various other things. It was fun to see topics discussed in class come to life as I went about doing something very usual.
Since then, I have not really looked at malls the same way again.
10:03 PM
