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A shopping center is a group of stores built together in one location, making it convenient for customers to visit multiple shops in a single trip. These centers matter because they efficiently bring together various retailers, saving shoppers time and effort compared to visiting scattered individual stores.
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The interior of the Toronto Eaton Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, a 201,320-square-metre (2,167,000 sq ft) super-regional shopping mall Interior of the Galerie Vivienne in Paris, by Francois Jean Delannoy, 1823-1826 A shopping center in American English, shopping centre in Commonwealth English (see spelling differences), shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza, or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof.
The first known collections of retailers under one roof are public markets, dating back to ancient times, and Middle Eastern covered markets, bazaars and souqs. In Paris, about 150 covered passages were built between the late 18th century and 1850, and a wealth of shopping arcades were built across Europe in the 19th century. In the United States, the widespread use of the automobile in the 1920s led to the first shopping centers consisting of a few dozen shops that included parking for cars. Starting in 1946, larger, open air centers anchored by department stores were built (sometimes as a collection of adjacent retail properties with different owners), and then enclosed shopping malls starting with Victor Gruen's Southdale Center near Minneapolis in 1956.