Hong Kong is the twenty-first-century paradigmatic capital of consumerism. Of all places, it has the densest and tallest concentration of malls, reaching tens of stories. Hong Kong’s malls are also the most visited, sandwiched between subways and skyscrapers. These mall complexes have become cities in and of themselves, accommodating tens of thousands of people who live, work, and play within a single structure. Mall City features Hong Kong as a unique rendering of an advanced consumer society. Retail space has come a long way since the nineteenth-century covered passages of Paris, which once awed the bourgeoisie with glass roofs and gaslights. It has morphed from the arcade to the department store, and from the mall into the “mall city”—where “expresscalators” crisscross mesmerizing atriums. Highlighting the effects of this development in Hong Kong, this book raises questions about architecture, city planning, culture, and urban life.

Profiling malls as intersections of American consumer marketing, the media, and street culture, an examination of malls as reflections of commercial and social culture considers what malls mean to ordinary people.

All the World’s a Mall details a whirlwind world tour in five stops: Edmonton, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Casablanca, chosen because they are home to some of the biggest malls on the planet. Cities within cities, these malls are wonderlands where visitors come from afar to: walk, eat, sleep, watch, swim, ride, photograph, and, of course, shop. With a curious, critical, and sometimes ironic eye, Swiss journalist Rinny Gremaud recounts her travels to and through these monstrous spaces of excess, relaying her conversations with patrons, employees, and executives, and contemplating the effects of globalized commerce. Informative and thoughtful, exhilarating and exhausting, jet-lagged and always air conditioned, All the World’s a Mall is a truly memorable, hallucinatory adventure.

In a collage of images the author attempts to convey the transformation of consumer culture and how it is related to the urban reshaping of the city of Cairo to meet with the demands of globalisation. Evidently Cairo ́s urban reshaping is taking place by pushing away the unwanted slums residents, which constitute the majority of the city ́s population.