For example, the folks who own the Mall of America have said for more than 20 years that it’s the largest mall in the United States, and if you count the building it’s sitting in, that’s true. Except a good chunk of that space is actually an amusement park. There are other malls that have more store space – as their owners are more than happy to report.

Another dispute is the first “shopping center” in the United States. Country Club Plaza often is cited, because it was planned and organized in downtown Kansas City, Mo., in the 1920s. Southdale Mall in Edina, Minn., was the first climate-controlled mall in the world (no disputes there). But the oldest shopping center in the United States probably is Faneuil Hall in Boston, which has been an organized marketplace since 1742.

Peter Faneuil, the wealthiest merchant in the city, built Faneuil Hall as a gift to the city. It housed merchants, fishmongers, produce sellers, meat vendors and became a gathering point for the city; its website claims that the 1764 Sugar Act was protested there, and orators over the centuries have included everyone from Samuel Adams to Barack Obama. Daniel Webster eulogized John Adams and Thomas Jefferson there in 1826.

And just like any good mall, it was expanded as the community demanded, adding the Quincy Market building in 1826. So it’s a bit ironic that after World War II, when suburban centers were just beginning to be built, that Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market had fallen into disrepair.

Enter mall developer James Rouse, who partnered in 1976 with architect Benjamin Thompson and then-Mayor Kevin White to renovate the buildings, add more, and create a retail and dining destination for the city, what the industry later called a Festival Marketplace. The complex has gone through a couple of owners since, and the retail now ranges from locally owned souvenir shops to Urban Outfitters. Restaurants, too, include both notable locals such as Durgin Park and national names including Ghirardelli’s Ice Cream Shop.

In fact, this is an unusually diverse mix compared with other malls even in the city, such as the Shops at Prudential Center and the ultra-luxe Copley Place. Faneuil Hall is a bit grittier (much of it is outdoors, after all), and has something for everyone in every income bracket.

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It’s so much a part of the city that it’s hard to remember now that Forum Shops at Caesars was a huge risk when it opened in 1992. At that time, it broke nearly every business rule of building a mall, from its location to its design to the stores in the center. Yet it succeeds, beautifully, and continues to do so when a lot of other malls built around the country have closed forever.

Think back more than 20 years and the image of Las Vegas then. It wasn’t exactly the heyday of the Rat Pack, but shopping wasn’t the first thing a visitor to the area (usually a gambler or, like me, a convention attendee) might think of. Who came to Sin City to shop, on the Strip of all places?

The answer then was mostly the residents, because there already was a large traditional center on the strip. The Fashion Show was a suburban-style mall with a local department store, and high-end stores Neiman Marcus and Saks. Did it serve the community (especially the locals)? Yes. Was it a show? No.

And that’s what where Forum got it right, the first time. It connects to the Caesars Palace casino, providing an extra set of restaurants and bars to drown your sorrows – and a place to spend the winnings. More important, it extended the theme of the resort, with a Romanesque design that continued the genuinely inauthentic feel of the entire Las Vegas Strip. Some retailers are housed in small villas – statues are on top of the “buildings.” Piazzas house seating areas with even more sculptures, some of which move and perform a show on the hour.

It even boasts a fake sky (which changes color during the day) that bridges the idea of an enclosed mall with a city street, circa 50 BC.

The fake sky was just the first part of the show – there are statues that come to life, a huge aquarium and early on a Trojan horse (outside FAO Schwarz) that visitors could enter. Other projects have tried artifice and failed. Ultimately, it comes down to the stores. The Forum Shops is an attraction, but also a legitimate mall for all shoppers and even more important a transformational source of dining.

Not everyone who visits Las Vegas is rich – or has just won big. But the Forum from the beginning had shops to appeal to both. You can get a Vuitton bag, expensive jewelry or an inexpensive souvenir T-shirt. But perhaps most important, you can eat, and eat well. In the late 1980s, there were a handful of great restaurants near the Strip. The Forum helped to draw celebrity chefs such as Wolfgang Puck to open restaurants that eventually helped the entire city become known as a town for foodies. Today, the list of restaurateurs is a Who’s Who of dining: Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Michael Mina, Mario Batali, Gordon Ramsey, Bobby Flay, Scott Conant and more. They could film Iron Chef America there.

The result was an instant success, and the project has been one of the most profitable in the industry, so much so the developers found a way to expand it in 2004. The new section brings the mall entry onto the Strip, allowing pedestrians to wander in without entering the casino. The “new” section focuses more on the luxury shopper, a nod to changing times and growing international tourism.

Other projects have followed, with varying success. The Grand Canal Shoppes, by the Venetian resort has its own gondola ride, and a similar mix of dining and high- and moderate shopping. Desert Passage, which followed the Forum playbook with a Middle Eastern theme (and yes, a faux sky) but struggled, has now been converted into the more traditional Miracle Mile. And the Fashion Show itself renovated into a much glitzier center, with a “Cloud” structure with a video screen — and a lot more dining. And as of mid-2014, more construction is planned, as casinos themselves build more retail.

But the Forum clearly stands apart, even as FAO Schwarz gives way to H&M, moving statues have to be reprogrammed, and Las Vegas itself survives a horrendous economic crash. It was the risk that turned out to be the right project at the right place at the right time.

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On the other hand, malls in China, where childbearing has been limited by law, build entire wings for them.

Why that’s true, however, may be because Chinese malls sometimes are three times the size of their U.S. counterparts. You have to fill all that space with something.

A little history: when enclosed malls first became popular in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, they sold a bit of everything – from department stores to even the occasional supermarket, they were a one-stop shop for the suburban family. That family probably had one car being used by the breadwinner (likely the dad), so shopping was a weekend activity that the kids had to participate in. As women came into the workforce in the 1970s and 1980s, and more people had more cars, malls became more fashion-oriented. Gone were the hardware stores, appliance repair and toy stores.

And very little gets more in the way of shoe shopping than a small child. Do malls in the United States and elsewhere offer family restrooms, rental strollers, etc. to make sure the toddlers are safe and controlled? Yes. Are there actually a lot of stores in the mall that cater to them? Not so much.

Even less appealing, at least until recent years, was the teenager, who’d rather hang out with noisy friends than actually buy something in the mall. At least that was the way the mall managers saw it. By the 1990s, some were trying curfews, others requiring teens to be accompanied after a certain hour. One played Frank Sinatra music to drive the adolescents away. (Shoo-be-doo-be-doo, indeed.)

Contrast this attitude with Golden Resources (Jin Yuan) Mall in Beijing, at 6 million square feet the largest mall in the world in 2004. That’s a lot of space — think three Macy’s Herald Square stores next to each other, or 1.5 Malls of America. It has 230 escalators, restaurants, a skating rink, and 1,000 stores, including an entire wing dedicated to outfitting and entertaining children. Yes, the kids other malls really would rather you leave at home.

In China, malls are built big – it’s a big country with a large population and at some point the stores will get filled. At least that was the idea in a nation where a lot of the real estate development still takes place by individuals or privately owned companies, whose owners want to make a point about their own success and potential. So they often built a lot more space than they needed at that time – or any time, as it turns out. Some are less than half full today. Golden Resources probably couldn’t afford to be turn down a lot of the stores that the managers of U.S. malls wouldn’t even consider.

And it took the six-story Golden Resources time to fill up, though it seemed pretty well occupied with tenants when I visited in 2012. Part of the problem may also have been that the mall is located relatively far outside the center of the city – this is as close to a North American suburban model as it gets in Beijing. Unlike some of the luxury centers in the heart of the city, which really are geared to selling western luxury goods to newly wealthy Chinese and visitors, Golden Resources has a huge assortment of local shops on the top levels, carrying Chinese goods and foodstuffs.

And that is its point – much like the suburban malls in the United States in the 1970s it’s about serving the locals. It’s too far out of town for all but the most intrepid foreign visitor (or someone in the business, like me). It has an IMAX, textile shops, and an entire wing for home furnishings, too. (Unlike a lot of suburban U.S. centers, it also has a cab stand.)

But it’s the sound of children on the upper levels, running around, playing, eating at tables sized for them, and surrounded by dozens of stores selling items for them that is most striking for the North American visitor. The home page center’s website, at this writing at least, features “everything for babies.”

It’s noisy (on the weekends), a little messy and a lot adorable. It’s fun as long as you’re not doing serious shopping yourself. And perhaps even inadvertently, the owners of Golden Resources may be earning the loyalty and affection of the shoppers who eventually will be the noisy teenagers, then the staple shoppers of tomorrow. We’ll see.

Are the malls too big in China? The only larger center in the country, New South China Mall, is 7.1 million square feet and virtually empty. So it’s fair to say the answer is: Yes, for now. After all, there are only a handful of centers the size of Mall of America anywhere else in the world.

But here, they like your kids.

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That’s a lot of time between developments, but perhaps the Ottoman Empire was stingy with building permits. Yet a comparison of the Bazaar and the newest completed mall, Akasya Acibadem on the Asian side of the city shows that in a lot of ways the format – and the shopping culture — remains the same.

Some history: Undoubtedly inspired in some degree by the bazaars of Persia, the Grand Bazaar was built by Sultan Mehmet II in 1455 or so to provide a place to trade textiles. Given Istanbul’s status as the crossroads of the world then, and the gateway to two continents today, it’s not surprising that a substantial marketplace would be built, hosting everyone from Marco Polo to most likely the ancestors of today’s tenants. And I still haven’t figured out who runs it – or if anyone actually does.

The complex grew over centuries, and was built and rebuilt after wars and earthquakes. What it has now is some 3,000 vendors, some of them running the same small stall for generations. Which makes sense, given the labyrinthine layout of the enclosed portion, with side alleys, cut-throughs and wrong turns that have convinced me there is an entire society that has been born in, lived in and never have left the building. There are cafes, police stations, some stunning leather and unique art — and an awful lot of the same Evil Eye and tea set merchandise over and over and over again.

It is confusing, overwhelming and exhausting, particularly for those unused to the bartering culture prevalent here. Merchant after merchant talks as you pass, trying to get attention, and then if they’ve got yours, to make you pay a lot more than your garment, trinket, or rug is worth. Don’t have enough Turkish lira? They take Euro and US Dollars – and probably will accept intergalactic whatevers when the aliens land.

The joy of the Grand Bazaar is that the best merchants find humor in the game, and want you to, as well. They’re not going to get as much for that tea set, rug, whatever as they want, and you’re probably not going to pay rock bottom price. But you’ve built an odd kinship that will continue as you walk in circles and end up passing him (invariably a him) again and again.

A true story:

“Remember me?” says the rug dealer from whom I’d purchased a kilim pillowcase an hour before. “Let me show you this rug – see the color? It’s very unusual to find
purple here.”

“That’s true. It looks lovely, but as I told you I have new carpets and don’t need another,” I replied (and which even was the truth).

“This is small so you wouldn’t put it on the floor,” he counters.

“A wall hanging?” I asked. See how easy it is to get into the game?

“Not really, it’s too big. It’s a perfect prayer mat,” he pitches.

“It is. But I’m a Roman Catholic,” I said. Which stopped the pitch dead with a shrug and a laugh, and we both went on our way.

The Grand Bazaar’s much smaller sibling, the Egyptian Market (also called the Spice Market) is much the same, but naturally with a greater emphasis on food. Want a demonstration of how to judge saffron, a sampling of Turkish Delight or the inevitable tea set? It’s a lot more manageable here. This market also seems to get many more locals.

Akasya, on the other hand, doesn’t do bartering – it’s a modern mall all the way, still in the process of opening. It has 300 retailers, not 3,000, including some of the best local (Beymen, a fashion brand) and a few international retailers (including Crate & Barrel, Victoria’s Secret, Zara and Shake Shack), befitting a project that costs nearly US$500 million. It has a master plan (from a U.S. architecture firm) and foreign investors.

Unlike the single-level, sprawling Grand Bazaar, this project has multiple floors, is flooded with light from multiple terraces and even includes Kidzania, a theme park for children to pretend to be adults. It is a luxury mall for an up-and-coming consumer – many of whom probably live in the apartments that are built right alongside the complex, which also includes a swimming pool and parking. It would be equally at home in Los Angeles, London or Shanghai, though it keeps the curved lines important in this part of the world, and blessedly bans smoking. It speaks international retail. And yes, women sell things.

But in its own way, it’s equally lively, because this center is geared to residents who want to live their daily lives. Women and children abound, picking up life’s necessities. It remembers that at its heart, the shopping place is really a gathering place, an excuse for people, particularly women, to meet in public and be entertained by each other as much as by merchandise.

Both projects have an energy, though, a vitality and an ear for its audience. And if Akasya is really lucky, someone will visit it in 600 years.

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“So why is a New Yorker traveling on a ticket bought in Dubai?” the agent asked me.

“By having the Middle East affiliate of my organization [the International Council of Shopping Centers] purchase it in local money, it saved several thousand dollars,” I said.

“Why were you in Dubai?” he continued.

“To attend a conference on shopping mall development in the Middle East–my organization represents mall developers worldwide,” I answered.

The rest of the interview proceeded apace, and with ticket stamped, I picked up bags to leave the podium. Except for one last question: “So, are the malls in the U.S. all the same like the ones here?”

“Pretty much.”

But that’s not really true, as I’ve discovered after more than 25 years reporting about retail and shopping center development, first around the United States, then around the world for trade publications and web sites.

Don’t laugh — it’s a big business that has created vast fortunes and changed local economies everywhere from Anchorage to Ankara, Singapore to Sydney. Developers have created spectacular projects that serve their residents with style — and architectural blights that have destroyed the fabric of the community.

I’m more interested in the former, because after thousands of articles, blog posts and a couple of trade books, I’ve found that you can learn a lot about a people from the way they shop. After all, we’ve been doing it for thousands of years!

While far too many shopping malls are “all the same,” the best ones do something more. They tell us a lot about about their shoppers: their culture, their current needs, their dreams and aspirations for the future. Some centers are marble-laden palaces for the wealthy; others are in countries with an emerging middle class. And a few more are in regions where a safe, organized place to buy basic needs is revolutionary.

Have I found all 80 malls yet? No, I’m still traveling and discovering — and getting advice from some industry friends. (Thank you, Cushman & Wakefield’s Yvonne Court, Marketing Developments’ Stan Eichelbaum, and Ian Thomas of Thomas Consultants for your counsel and support.)  Come and learn along with me as I tell these stories, one mall at a time.

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