M'sian Shopping Culture and Environment

This is the first english post in this blog that i have always been treating it as chinese blog. Anyhow, i decided to type english for this post as chinese could be a bit tougher to elaborate the contents. And, this is a blog of my NewAge, while NewAge is not yet completely defined and so its border is still yet rather vague. So, you wouldnt mind it allows some slippage of contents from any pre-concept, right?

Before this, i should say sorry for inability to put on any relevant photo alongside description for this post. This apparently makes harder for what i intend to write and so maybe i should just post a short one instead of an 'ambitiously' long one.

Couple days before, with my father, i managed to have a walk in the Ikano-Ikea-Cinileisure-Curve in Damansara without idling in the nearby shopping mall One-Utama. I name these 4 complexes together as they are actually interlinked by different means: bridge, terrace, promenade, etc. The shopping area was designed and planned with interesting concepts, that look to be catching up with Singapore or some western countries. Here, beside shopping, concept of idling is quite promoted with shopping-arcade-like design. It has quite some extensions: the street, the walk, the piazza, the terrace, outdoor, indoor, that offer variety of multiple shopping-eating-idling experience.

Here, is quite an ideal place to house the ‘flaneur’ culture of citizens that are lack of comfortable green recreational places. Some feel of promenading can be sensed maybe, with the flow of crowds, the still of goods, and some awareness of weather change. Nevertheless, some other people from rural areas actually may find hard to get used with it, while some even get lost themselves in these complexes. Why? Maybe it just has too many extensions, too much demarcation and zonings for functions accordingly. And so spontaneousity of users’ experiences is limited in a sense that ‘it is better to buy shirts in that block, better to have Eastern food at another wing, Western food on the opposite, etc. This situation also actually ‘sanitizes’ the customer crowds to certain groups at particular space. Therefore, we can see that some fashion shops are not opened yet, simply because the overall concept still hard to sustain the viability of those many suites in proportions to customers and visitors. The dilemma of these complexes planning is the contradiction between the effort of offering multiple experiences and the actual situation that fragmentizes the user group.

On the other hand, Mid Valley shopping mall stands undoubtedly as a successful mall to house all the commodities, specialist services and people. It generates money. Everything housed in this shopping mall, like fashions, cinema, health care, markets, food courts, digital, etc. I can hardly hear people complaining about getting lost in this mall. It has many choices for different classes of people, where a more ‘nation-wide’ welcoming is more possible in some sense. Despite its success on consumption and consumerism, it maybe has less interesting spaces to explore and idle, less offer of ‘wonder and wander’ spirit. Anyway, its ideal location to be reached by different spots in Kuala Lumpur makes it strategically irresistible and maybe ‘irreplaceable’. It is a pure shopping mall, a casing that shelter commodities and consumers, within a block that shield people from weather. Other than storm, sunny day, etc, maybe only earthquake will be sensible when you are inside it.

We have also another famous shopping mall at the bottom of Petronas Twin Towers—Suria KLCC. Apparently, there are more foreigners with higher consumption level. There seems to be a dramatic growth of rich Middle East visitors to go shopping. Suria KLCC is considered a high-end shopping area, where all high class fashion and design could be found. However, I always see its dilemma of identity crisis and uncertainty in getting user (consumer) group or class. It is supposed to be a place for the nation, yet many people of this country seldom go there for shopping because of affordability problem. Rich people (including foreign visitors) are still minority in this country. Or, maybe a display for the minority always appears to be much more dominant than the norm?

More specifically, this post title could be "the shopping culture and environment of KL citizens". But KL is the capital, and more people are Kuala-Lumpurized.