The shopping mall consumes an enormous amount of space in our collective consciousness. It occupies this space like the library and the stadium: as a powerful collective social space and a monumental physical object. However, the library and stadium are both ancient typologies tested by time while the auto-oriented shopping mall is a recent invention.

The following six factors that should be considered when rebranding a retail center, including the naming process, appealing to the area’s local demographic, and finding ways to be creative.

In-line shopping centers have entered a new, third generation of design that reinvents their modern roots while creating humane architecture. The first generation of in-line shopping centers was the strip mall. Based on late 1960s modernist ideas of flexibility, it sought the ability to put tenants in any location. It had a pure, raw functionalism that made it a successful retail prototype. The second generation began in the 1990s with a post-modernization of the strip mall.