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Shopping hubs

A larger commercial zone can be found in many cities, more formally called a central business district, but more commonly called " downtown " in the United States, or the "high street" in Britain, and souks in Arabic speaking areas.

Shopping hubs, or shopping centers, are collections of stores; that is a grouping of several businesses in a compact geographic area. It consists of a collection of retail, entertainment and service stores designed to serve products and services to the surrounding region.

Typical examples include shopping malls, town squares, flea markets and bazaars.

Traditionally, shopping hubs were called bazaars or marketplaces; an assortment of stalls lining streets selling a large variety of goods.

The modern shopping centre is now different from its antecedents, the stores are commonly in individual buildings or compressed into one large structure (usually called Mall in the USA).

The first modern shopping mall in the US was The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City which opened in 1922, from there the first enclosed mall was designed by Victor Gruen and opened in 1956 as Southdale Centre in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.

Malls peaked in America in the 1980s-1990s when many larger malls (more than 37,000 sq m in size) were built, attracting consumers from within a 32 km radius with their luxurious department stores.

Different types of malls can be found around the world. Superregional malls are very large malls that contain at least five department stores and 300 shops. This type of mall attracts consumers from a broad radius (up to a 160-km). A regional mall can contain at least two department stores or " anchor stores ". One of the biggest malls in the world is the one near Miami, called "Sawgrass Mills Mall": it has 2,370,610 square feet (220,237 m2) of retail selling space, with over 329 retail outlets and name brand discounters.

The smaller malls are often called open-air strip centres or mini-marts and are typically attached to a grocery store or supermarket.

The smaller malls are less likely to include the same features of a large mall such as an indoor concourse, but are beginning to evolve to become enclosed to comply with all weather and customer preferences.