From Shopping Malls to Living Arcades: A Full-Circle Journey Into Modern Arcadism

People are living in shopping malls. The once-beacons of capitalism and leisure, the American shopping mall, went from being almost totally vacant and abandoned to being restored as indoor residential communities.

To give you a brief history: Arcades were shopping malls in 19th-century Paris. Some of these arcades still exist to this day. Arcades are a series of architectural arches that make up a pathway.

Perhaps the most notable points of interest concerning arcades pertain to the very word itself.

The term "arcade" contains the French root "arc," relating to an "arch" or "bow." This makes sense when we think of the first arcades as simply a series of arches within an architectural structure. You may have noticed these repeated arches or arcades in the Colosseum of ancient Rome or perhaps in your local mosque or church.

Not only does the "arcade" relate to architecture, but it was later used to describe shopping centers or "shopping arcades." In his unfinished, posthumously released work "The Arcades Project," philosopher Walter Benjamin collected various writings about the glass-roofed, iron-covered centers built for leisure and commerce in Paris during the 1930s. This eclectic collection is seen as a framework for post-modernist thinking.

It is partly because of this architectural relation that arcades can directly reference shopping malls. Of course, in the modern era, underneath these arches and within shopping centers, we also encounter the type of "arcade" we are more familiar with—the video arcade.

Fast forward to today, those very arcades of antiquity, which became the American shopping malls of the modern era, were abandoned and turned into liminal spaces—haunting thresholds with no purpose. Now, they are being reported to have become residential areas, bringing people together as communities under one roof. Isn't it ironic that the concept of Arcadia as a utopia became one of commerce and merchants, only to eventually return to the symbolism related to the utopian society of myth?

By 2022, 192 U.S. malls planned to add housing. Lafayette Square Mall in Indianapolis will open apartments, including affordable housing, in a former Sears by 2025. The Arcade Providence in Rhode Island, America’s oldest mall, was converted into micro-apartments and retail spaces years ago.

This shift is reshaping Arcadism theory.  Malls—once utopian shopping hubs—declined with tech advances and are now being reborn as places to live. A fascinating full-circle moment.

The benefits of these indoor shopping centers as living spaces include the accessibility and utilitarian architectural design that incredibly designed shopping centers facilitate. Through capitalism and innovation come peaks of utopian ideology. This story is still very much ongoing and will be covered in my future works on Arcadism.