Malls have always been there for the longest time, I don’t personally know what its like to live on a day to day basis without the mall, I love the mall, it’s a place that relaxes me and I’m almost always glad to be in one, the place is cold, there is food available when I’m hungry, clothes and accessories when I need them, books when I’m depressed, you can even say the mall has everything, now the mall holds mass, there are govt. centers, travel centers, food courts, appliances, clothing. If you were trapped inside a mall you would survive. Knowing all of this it staggers me that I know so little about malls, about its design and architecture, come to think of it now I know I don’t even notice the form and structure from the inside, but now you can say I know better, it really amazed me that malls were specifically designed to fit the people they are supposed to accommodate, like the difference between shangrila and megamall, the former built sprawling up where in people are encouraged to purchase something, its for the upper crust of society, and then there is the latter with floors sprawling far and wide, to accommodate the people who really love to walk around, to stay awhile its for the middle to low class; you see I never thought of that I always believed that those malls were made like that because the company wasn’t able to purchase land so they had to sprawl up and not down.
Malls being well integrated into society already now aims to build a micro city I learned that today, most people who have the capacity to afford to be in one would enter one. A micro city is a small city that makes the life of people in a sense easier everything is efficient and within reach. Its cool and all and I would be a hypocrite if I said that I didn’t want to live in one, who could refuse no traffic, live near a mall, less pollution, less danger, walking distance school, oh how I would love that; but in the long run I would have to agree that it does cause indifferentiation people who are not confined in those micro cities are already apathetic and indifferent to one another what more if we entered a more secluded world. Apart from this I really noticed that if that happened our nationalism would begin to ebb away, we would no longer be true Filipinos by heart because not only would we not care about our country’s economy, we would not care about other people who need help, who are poor. We would be shaped into this western system where everything is about efficiency and every man is his own island. The people who already worship western culture as something cool, something that is desired and to be desired would get worst, they will imitate until they will no longer feel like they really are Filipinos and that in itself is a tragedy.
Personally I don’t know how to improve the system, my best bet is just to educate the people more and hopefully instill some compassion and passion along the way.