The Economist June 4th 2022 Asia 49T
he shoppingmall was invented,
nearly 70 years ago, in America. It was
then copied in Europe. Yet Asia has inar-
guably made the shopping mall its own.
Eight of the world’s ten biggest malls are
in the region; exclude China and five still
remain, all in South-East Asia.
Asia’s glass-and-concrete malls suck-
ing city dwellers indoors mark a huge
architectural and cultural break. Until
near the end of the 20th century, the
region’s monumental architecture was
dominated by imposing projections of
imperial, communist or newly minted
post-colonial state power: think of Bei-
jing’s Forbidden City and Tiananmen
Square, Lutyens-era New Delhi or Su-
karno’s reshaping of Jakarta, with wide
avenues and imposing government
buildings. What will future archaeol-
ogists, then, make of the vast retail boxes
jutting out of Asia’s urban sprawl?
They may divine Asian antecedents.
In early 20th-century Japan, the devel-
opment of railways made terminuses the
natural place for multistorey emporiums
that blended shopping with entertain-
ment and even culture: exhibitions of
exquisite kimonos, lacquerware, pottery
or woodblock prints designed to appeal
to a burgeoning middle class. Just as
many of Tokyo’s posh department stores
were built by railway companies, so
today one of Hong Kong’s big mall devel-
opers is the public-transport operator.
Passengers are whisked effortlessly from
the platform to the mall above.
In the densest conurbations, the
concept goes a step further. Various
malls are connected by underground
tunnels or, more dramatically, sky-bridg-
es. Discouraged from ever touching the
ground outside, you float for miles
through elevated rivers of retail and
entertainment bliss, sampling shops,eateries, cinemas, exhibitions, play areas,
skating rinks and even parks. High-rise
housing blocks also connect, allowing
residents to descend to heaven. Here is a
safe space for multi-generational families
or friends to gather. Bangkok is one ex-
ample of the trend. Singapore is an apo-
theosis of sorts, a republic of malls.
Yet Banyan is, by profession, a flâneur
in Asia. And despite notable improve-
ments in public transport, an invariable
consequence of mall-building is to wrap
developments in ever-widening networks
of highways and approach roads. Heavily
discriminated against is the pedestrian
trying to cross the city at ground level.
Nor is the flâneur nourished once
inside the pleasure domes. There sit the
same store brands and the same eateries
(though if you are lucky you may be able to
sit “outside” under plastic palm trees).
Artificial light replaces the natural kind,
an intentional disruption to circadian
rhythms to keep you trapped in mall-time.
Less heaven than inescapable purgatory.
In the malls along Singapore’s Orchard
Road, getting out is a challenge. You popyour head above ground like a marmot,
to find that you are in the wrong place.
No choice but to return to the mall and
wander about for another eternity.
To be fair, malls offer shelter from the
heat and humidity: one Hong Kong col-
league hates malls except from May to
October, when the weather is at its most
oppressive. But try napping on a bench, if
you can find one. A security guard will
soon be nudging you awake. All this
points to a glaring, if little mentioned,
feature of Asia’s malls. Though suppos-
edly open to all, they are pseudo-public
spaces at best. In India officious guards
keep out anyone but the upper classes,
unless they are employees or carrying
someone’s bags. Everywhere behaviour is
circumscribed by the (unpublished)
by-laws of private developers. People in
power surely approve of malls’ anaesthe-
tising effect upon political expression.
If true civic space and accountability
existed in abundance outside the malls,
it would not matter. But governments too
often give politically well-connected
developers cut-rate land, eating into
scarce public space. In Manila the biggest
malls sit in surreal, first-world devel-
opments that are a self-enclosed world
away from nearby slums, poverty and
violence. Manila’s elites, who live in
these developments, are notoriously
unconcerned with confronting the city’s
huge challenges.
Does the pandemic mark peak mall?
In many, footfall is returning only slowly.
Shopping is moving fast online. In
South-East Asia tax perks and easy mon-
ey have encouraged a mall surfeit, with
hulking carcasses now rotting across the
cityscape. Future archaeologists will
wonder why 21st-century urban planners
thought shops needed so much space,
and people so little.The luxury of Asia’s malls is no substitute for genuine public spacesBanyanIncredible hulks
But if Vietnam hopes to achieve net-ze-
ro emissions by 2050, it will have to work
even harder. Demand for energy in the
country has grown by about 10% a year over
the past decade, according to Dezan Shira,
a consulting firm. More and more of it is
being met with coal. The share of electrici-
ty generated by the dirty stuff increased
from 33% to 51% in the five years to 2021,
says Ember, an energy think-tank in Lon-
don (see chart on previous page). The gov-
ernment must also ensure that the econ-
omy continues to boom—before the pan-
demic it was growing by 5-7% per year—
even as the country weans itself off coal.
Government planners “need to ramp up
wind and solar very quickly, year in, year
out”, says Mr Burke. It is not yet clear how
they will do this. The master plan outlining
how the country will generate energy, pub-
lished once a decade, is being revised, and
may be out as early as this month. Most of
the electricity derived from renewables
currently comes from hydroelectric dams.
Planners also need to consider the grid,
which must be expanded and upgraded so
that it covers the entire country and is able
to cope with the intermittent nature ofpower supplied by renewables. It does not
even have the ability to absorb all the re-
newable energy Vietnam is currently gen-
erating. “Improving the grid will be ex-
tremely expensive, almost certainly re-
quiring the government to seek private in-
vestment,” says an analyst based in Hanoi.
But some at evn, as well as policymakers
worried about national security, are reluc-
tant to cede big transmission assets to the
private sector. “Mindsets at evncan shift,”
says the analyst, “but it will happen slow-
ly.” To reach its targets, Vietnam will need
to hurry them along.