about shopping malls

我很喜欢的一个writer, bill bryson, once said

"we used to  build civilizations. We now build shopping malls."

I am against shopping malls in principle. I only shop out of necessity. Don't find too much pleasure in shopping, unless with a friend, or out of depression.

he also said

"To qualify as an edge city, a community must have 5 million square feet of office space, 600,000 square feet of shopping, and more people working there than living there. America now has more than 200 edge cities. Los Angeles and New York have about two dozen each. Almost all have been created since 1960, and almost always they are soulless, impersonal places, unfocused collections of shopping malls and office complexes that are ruthlessly unsympathetic to non-motorists. Many have no pavements or pedestrian crossings, and only rarely do they offer any but the most skeletal public transport links to the nearby metropolis, effectively denying job opportunities to many of those left behind in the declining inner cities. About one third of all Americans now live in edge cities, and up to two-thirds of Americans work in them. "