The Mall VS Downtown

MCU
Ariel 林芯妤 93659354
#10, Thu-06:30~08:15pm

The Mall VS. Downtown
Point of view：Third person
Verb tense：Present
Thesis statement：
Since the 1950s, American shoppers have been spending their money in suburban malls instead of in downtown business districts.

First paragraph：Introduction
Topic sentence：Americans don't like weather.
Concrete detail：They like to be indoors whenever possible. Never seeing the sun from the time they first enter until they leave.


Second paragraph：Body
Topic sentence：Americans love convenience and, except during the crush of major holidays, malls
offer plenty of convenient parking.
Concrete detail：For cars that circle in search of the closest slot and an easy entrance. Plenty of docking points.

Third paragraph：Body
Topic sentence：The mall offers an extraordinary variety of products under its one gigantic roof.
Concrete detail：Specialty stores and boutiques offer items that people don't realize they
need until they're put under the spell of brightly lighted, beautifully urnished window after window of beguiling wares

Fourth paragraph：The final description for mall
Topic sentence：The mall feels safe
Concrete detail：it is lighted, warm, dry, busy.

Fifth to eighth paragraph：Body
Topic sentence：Comparing the downtown
Concrete detail：Sad repair, parking difficult,

Final paragraph：Conclusion
Topic sentence：The truth is that the American mall grows where it does because someone with
enormously deep pockets decides to plunk it down where there used to be woods
or a golf course.
Concrete detail：convenient parking, freedom weather, awful price.

Summary：It’s an essay compare the shopping place between mall and downtown in America. Seems there are many difference but interesting points such like service, convenient, and products etc.

Recourse from ：http://www.123helpme.com/



The Mall VS Downtown

Since the 1950s, American shoppers have been spending their money in suburban malls instead of in downtown business districts. This is even true of shoppers who have to go out of their way to shop in the malls; they will bypass downtown stores (which they might have gotten to by convenient bus) to drive to the brightly bedecked and weather-free meccas of shopper-heaven. The result, some people claim, is the demise of the central urban commercial district, Downtown, a process leading inevitably toward more widespread urban blight. But why are Americans are so easily lured to shop in malls in the first place? First, Americans don't like weather. They like to be indoors whenever possible, even on nice days, and they're willing to pay a premium to be protected from the elements. If they can find someone who can afford it, they will even put their sports stadiums under a gigantic bowl, and they love to stay indoors for a day of shopping, perhaps never seeing the sun from the time they first enter until they leave, hours later, relieved of money, oxygen, and much money.

Second, Americans love convenience and, except during the crush of major holidays, malls offer plenty of convenient parking. A happy, enormous island of commerce in a sea of asphalt, the mall offers plenty of docking points - usually next to major commercial outlets - for cars that circle in search of the closest slot and an easy entrance.

Third, the mall offers an extraordinary variety of products under its one gigantic roof. Specialty stores and boutiques offer items that people don't realize they need until they're put under the spell of brightly lighted, beautifully furnished window after window of beguiling wares. Malls are built to respond to Americans' insatiable desire for stuff; either that, or a generation of Americans has been genetically engineered to respond to the sellers of stuff. Either way, it works.

And finally, the mall feels safe: it is lighted, warm, dry, busy. Senior citizens are invited to do their walking exercises there in the early hours; physically challenged people easily meander the smooth floors of curbless, stairless businesses in motorized carts; children are amused by clowns and fed at convenient cafeterias in Food Court.

America's Downtown, on the other hand, is often in sad repair. Parking is difficult, if not dangerous, and until you get through the door, it's all outdoors. To get from store to store, you must expose yourself to heat, cold, rain, snow. There are sometimes solicitors to fleece you of change before you even get into a store. If there is a plan here, it is not evident to most shoppers. Where is the information kiosk with a cordial, well-informed attendant to direct you to the nearest clothier, jeweler, fast-food outlet, or bathroom? Is there a bathroom?

What is left in the American Downtown to recommend it to shoppers? Practically nothing. Nothing, that is, unless you regard as important the notion that the businesses you give your money to should be owned by people, families, in your own community. Yes, there may be chain-stores; it seems there has always been a W. T. Grants, a J. C. Penneys, a Whackers. But the people who owned the franchise and worked behind the cash register were people you might meet in your own neighborhood. When you walk into the Downtown hardware store, you often feel wood, not vinyl linoleum, beneath your feet. And some old guy, who seemed old when he sold your father the hammer you use today, will sell you nails in a paper bag, weighing them out by the handful until you get the exact number you need, not the arbitrary number that comes in a hermetically sealed plastic box.

Next door, in the department store, there will be two women who know you by name and who can't wait to help you find what you need or will let you ruminate among the shelves if you want. In the drug store across the street, the pharmacist knows your aches and pains and what you've been taking for them the last five years and what upsets your stomach and knows to call your doctor when the prescription doesn't make sense. If there is a soda fountain there - naah, that's asking too much.

The truth is that the American mall grows where it does because someone with enormously deep pockets decides to plunk it down where there used to be woods or a golf course. He surrounds it with hundreds of acres of parking and waits for people to come spend their money, as he knows they will because people will do what mass advertising tells them to do. Downtown, on the other hand, grew where it did because there was an organic need for it. It was a community's response to a community's needs - neighbors responding to neighbors - and it flourished as the community flourished. If the mall can replace this sense of community, then so be it; it deserves our affection as well as our dollars. If it can't, then we have gained convenient parking and freedom from the weather at an awful price.