Week 11 DAI227 Questions-Topic-Theme Parks & Shopping Malls

Christopher Diaz-Mihell

DAI 227, David Cox

April 21, 2011

Week 11 DAI227 Questions - Topic - THEME PARKS & SHOPPING MALLS

1) In Margaret Crawford's Essay "The World in a Shopping Mall she outlines that 'the size and scale of a mall reflects "threshold demand"' - what is meant by this term?

         - The term “threshold demand” is used to describe a theory put forward by Crawford that describes the correlation between the scale of a mall and its potential customers living within a geographical range to secure profit. Crawford puts forward this idea to highlight the correlation of mall sizes to revenue.

2) In the same article Margaret Crawford describes something called "spontaneous malling" - what does this mean?

         - In the essay “The World in a Shopping Mall”, Margaret Crawford defines “spontaneous malling” as a process that transforms urban spaces into malls without new buildings or developers. This idea is used to describe a society that is dominated by consumerism, where any public shopping zone becomes transformed into a mall.

3) According to Michael Sorkin in his essay 'See you in Disneyland', how did Disneyland have its origins?

         - According to Sorkin a hagiographer had claimed the idea for the park came to Disney in 1938 on a trip to Chicago’s Railroading Fair, “where he was invited to don engineer’s overalls and climb behind the throttle of a historic locomotive, fulfilling a childhood dream” (Sorkin, 206). Which led to Disney creating his very own miniature railroad that traveled around his house, “anticipating the rail-ringed parks to come.” Another myth claims that the parks origin came from Disney’s disgust at its failures of hygiene after a visit to a conventional amusement park. Unlike these stories, Disneyland’s immediate origins are specific. “Strapped for cash to finance spiraling construction costs, the previously TV-shy Disney cut a deal with ABC, then struggling far behind its two rivals” (Sorkin, 206).

4) Michael Sorkin writes in his essay that Disney's EPCOT Center was motivated largely by frustrations Disney felt at his Anaheim CA park. What were those frustrations?

         - These frustrations derived from Anaheim’s surrounding area. Sorkin writes, “Disneyland was beleaguered by an undisciplined periphery: the huge success of the park prompted developers to buy up miles of surrounding countryside, which was promptly converted to a regulation less tangle of hotels and low commerce” (Sorkin, 224). Sorkin also describes how Disney’s troubles or frustrations doubled when he figured he was losing millions to other Hotels housing his visitors.

5) In his essay "Travels in Hyperreality" Umberto Eco describes Disneyland as 'a place of total passivity' - what does he mean by this?

         - Eco uses the phrase ‘a place of total passivity’ to describe how we as visitors must agree to behave like robots when visiting Disneyland. Eco goes on to say “access to each attraction is regulated by a maze of metal railings which discourages any individual initiative.” Eco also writes that the number of visitors entail the pace of the line and “properly dressed in the uniforms suited to each specific attraction, not only admit the visitor to the threshold of the chosen sector, but, in successive phases, regulate his every move (“Now wait here please, go up now, sit down please, wait before standing up.”