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113-490: The Old Town Mall or Oldtown Mall is a mostly abandoned outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in the Old Town neighborhood of Baltimore , Maryland . The mall contains 64 stores, the majority of which are closed. The area has seen many periods of revival and decline in the past 200 years since its opening, and there are currently plans by developers in the area to revitalize the mall. Old Town and Gay Street started to become
226-507: A South Asian country, emerges as one of the world's fastest movers since 1970 mainly due to health and education achievements. Its present life expectancy is 25 years longer than in the 1970s. More than four of every five children of school age in Nepal now attend primary school, compared to just one in five 40 years ago. Hong Kong ranked highest among the countries grouped on the HDI (number 7 in
339-1246: A farmer's market. Shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall ) is a large indoor shopping center , usually anchored by department stores . The term mall originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, it began to be used as a generic term for the large enclosed shopping centers that were becoming increasingly commonplace. In the United Kingdom and other countries, shopping malls may be called shopping centres . In recent decades, malls have declined considerably in North America , particularly in subprime locations, and some have closed and become so-called " dead malls ". Successful exceptions have added entertainment and experiential features, added big-box stores as anchors, or converted to other specialized shopping center formats such as power centers , lifestyle centers , factory outlet centers, and festival marketplaces . In Canada, shopping centres have frequently been replaced with mixed-use high-rise communities. In many European countries and Asian countries , shopping malls continue to grow and thrive. In
452-492: A few jurisdictions, notably California , have expanded the right of freedom of speech to ensure that speakers will be able to reach consumers who prefer to shop, eat, and socialize within the boundaries of privately owned malls. The Supreme Court decision Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins was issued on 9 June 1980 which affirmed the decision of the California Supreme Court in a case that arose out of
565-780: A free speech dispute between the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, California, and several local high school students. This is a list of the world's largest shopping malls based on their gross leasable area (GLA), with a GLA of at least 250,000 m (2,700,000 sq ft). Some wholesale market complexes also function as shopping malls in that they contain retail space which operate as stores in normal malls do but also act as producer vendor outlets that can take large orders for export. Asia Asia ( / ˈ eɪ ʒ ə / AY -zhə , UK also / ˈ eɪ ʃ ə / AY -shə )
678-570: A hotel, luxury condominiums, and office space and sits atop a block-long base containing an eight-level atrium-style retail mall that fronts on the Magnificent Mile . Vertical malls are common in densely populated conurbations in East and Southeast Asia. Hong Kong in particular has numerous examples such as Times Square , Dragon Centre , Apm , Langham Place , ISQUARE , Hysan Place and The One . A vertical mall may also be built where
791-493: A large number of new malls had been built near major cities, notably the MEGA malls such as Mega Belaya Dacha mall near Moscow . In large part they were financed by international investors and were popular with shoppers from the emerging middle class. A shopping property management firm is a company that specializes in owning and managing shopping malls. Most shopping property management firms own at least 20 malls. Some firms use
904-534: A major competitor to shopping malls. In the United States , online shopping has accounted for an increasing share of total retail sales. In 2013, roughly 200 out of 1,300 malls across the United States were going out of business. To combat this trend, developers have converted malls into other uses including attractions such as parks, movie theaters, gyms, and even fishing lakes. In the United States,
1017-676: A major hub for outsourcing. Trade between Asian countries and countries on other continents is largely carried out on the sea routes that are important for Asia. Individual main routes have emerged from this. The main route leads from the Chinese coast south via Hanoi to Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur through the Strait of Malacca via the Sri Lankan Colombo to the southern tip of India via Malé to East Africa Mombasa (see also: Indo-Pacific ), from there to Djibouti , then through
1130-955: A mall the center reverts to its own name and branding, such as the Ashley Centre in Epsom . Similarly, following its rebranding from Capital Shopping Centres, intu Properties renamed many of its centres to "intu (name/location)" (such as intu Lakeside ); again, malls removed from the network revert to their own brand (see for instance The Glades in Bromley ). One controversial aspect of malls has been their effective displacement of traditional main streets or high streets . Some consumers prefer malls, with their parking garages, controlled environments, and private security guards , over central business districts (CBD) or downtowns , which frequently have limited parking, poor maintenance, outdoor weather, and limited police coverage. In response,
1243-575: A marsh or lowland containing a marsh in Lydia as ασιος . The term was later adopted by the Romans , who used it in reference to the province of Asia , located in western Anatolia. One of the first writers to use Asia as a name of the whole continent was Pliny . The history of Asia can be seen as the distinct histories of several peripheral coastal regions: East Asia , South Asia , Southeast Asia , Central Asia , and West Asia . The coastal periphery
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#17328026151401356-418: A parking lot in hopes that a major grocery store chain would build a location at the mall. The area has been mostly unchanged since then. The mall once contained a 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m) Kaufman's department store in the former Benesch building, the only anchor. Today, a haunted house operates from this building each October since 2015. On March 25, 2015, two men were shot in the afternoon hours at
1469-806: A popular way to build retail across the world. Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl. Even though malls mostly appeared in suburban areas in the U.S., some U.S. cities facilitated the construction of enclosed malls downtown as an effort to revive city centers and allow them to compete effectively with suburban malls. Examples included Main Place Mall in Buffalo (1969) and The Gallery (1977, now Fashion District Philadelphia ) in Philadelphia. Other cities created open-air pedestrian malls . In
1582-645: A retail area when the City of Baltimore built the Bel Air Market in 1818. The sixth market to be constructed, Bel Air was designed to be a relief farmers market to serve the increasing commercial operations surrounding the area. The market helped boost business in Old Town, and the area became a diverse, bustling middle-class neighborhood, and the proximity to the city center made it an ideal place for families and downtown workers to live. Isaac Benesch’s Great Store
1695-549: A similar naming scheme for most of their malls; for example, Mills Corporation puts "Mills" in most of its mall names and SM Prime Holdings of the Philippines puts "SM" in all of its malls, as well as anchor stores such as The SM Store, SM Appliance Center, SM Hypermarket, SM Cinema, and SM Supermarket. In the UK, The Mall Fund changes the name of any center it buys to "The Mall (location)" , using its pink-M logo; when it sells
1808-530: A way to revitalize Gay Street. Developers decided to convert the street into a pedestrian-only zone and name it the Old Town Mall. The street was repaved with bricks; planters, street lamps, and trees were added; and even a fountain was installed in the center along with a clock tower that would bear the name of the mall. More than $ 1.7 million had been spent on the project. In the late 1960s, the area opened with "much fanfare". Government officials from across
1921-676: A year before the Great Recession , no new malls were built in America, for the first time in 50 years. City Creek Center Mall in Salt Lake City , which opened in March 2012, was the first to be built since the recession. Malls began to lose consumers to open-air power centers and lifestyle centers during the 1990s, as consumers preferred to park right in front of and walk directly into big-box stores with lower prices and without
2034-399: Is a region where various independent cultures coexist rather than sharing a single culture, and the boundary between Europe is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity . The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural differences, some of which vary on a spectrum. China and India traded places as the largest economies in
2147-1112: Is generally defined as comprising the eastern four-fifths of Eurasia. It is located to the east of the Suez Canal and the Ural Mountains , and south of the Caucasus Mountains (or the Kuma–Manych Depression ) and the Caspian and Black Seas . It is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean , on the south by the Indian Ocean and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. Asia is subdivided into 49 countries, five of them ( Georgia , Azerbaijan , Russia , Kazakhstan and Turkey ) are transcontinental countries lying partly in Europe . Geographically, Russia
2260-514: Is growing rapidly. In 2010, Asia had 3.3 million millionaires (people with net worth over US$ 1 million excluding their homes), slightly below North America with 3.4 million millionaires. In 2011, Asia topped Europe in number of millionaires. Citigroup in The Wealth Report 2012 stated that Asian centa-millionaire overtook North America's wealth for the first time as the world's "economic center of gravity" continued moving east. At
2373-467: Is moist across southeast sections, and dry across much of the interior. Some of the largest daily temperature ranges on Earth occur in western sections of Asia. The monsoon circulation dominates across southern and eastern sections, due to the presence of the Himalayas forcing the formation of a thermal low which draws in moisture during the summer. Southwestern sections of the continent are hot. Siberia
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#17328026151402486-529: Is one of the coldest places in the Northern Hemisphere , and can act as a source of arctic air masses for North America. The most active place on Earth for tropical cyclone activity lies northeast of the Philippines and south of Japan. Climate change is particularly important in Asia, as the continent accounts for the majority of the human population. Warming since the 20th century is increasing
2599-721: Is partly in Asia, but is considered a European nation , both culturally and politically. The Gobi Desert is in Mongolia and the Arabian Desert stretches across much of the Middle East. The Yangtze in China is the longest river in the continent. The Himalayas between Nepal and China is the tallest mountain range in the world. Tropical rainforests stretch across much of southern Asia and coniferous and deciduous forests lie farther north. There are various approaches to
2712-493: Is projected to move to third place, behind China and India. While nearly half of the world's new renewable energy capacity is built in Asia, this is not yet sufficient in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement . They imply that the renewables would account for 35% of total energy consumption in Asia by 2030. Asia has the largest continental economy in the world by both GDP nominal and PPP values, and
2825-429: Is the fastest growing economic region. As of 2023 , China is by far the largest economy on the continent, making up nearly half of the continent's economy by GDP nominal. It is followed by Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which are all ranked among the top 20 largest economies both by nominal and PPP values. Based on Global Office Locations 2011, Asia dominated the office locations with 4 of
2938-403: Is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers, about 30% of Earth 's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population , was the site of many of the first civilizations . Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of
3051-598: The European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC ). This ended in 2010 when China overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy. It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2027. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP by currency exchange rates was almost as large as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of
3164-731: The Hebrew Bible in the narrative of Noah —and later to Christians in the Old Testament , and to Muslims in the Quran —is earliest found in Mesopotamian mythology , in the Enûma Eliš and Epic of Gilgamesh . Hindu mythology similarly tells about an avatar of Vishnu in the form of a fish who warned Manu of a terrible flood. Ancient Chinese mythology also tells of a Great Flood spanning generations, one that required
3277-621: The Hindu Kush region will become more unstable as its enormous glaciers , known as the "Asian water towers", gradually melt. These changes to water cycle also affect vector-borne disease distribution, with malaria and dengue fever expected to become more prominent in the tropical and subtropical regions. Food security will become more uneven, and South Asian countries could experience significant impacts from global food price volatility. Historical emissions from Asia are lower than those from Europe and North America. However, China has been
3390-722: The Surami Pass and along the Kura River to the Caspian Sea), a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. During the Hellenistic period , this convention was revised, and the boundary between Europe and Asia was now considered to be the Tanais (the modern Don River). This is the convention used by Roman era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo and Ptolemy . The border between Asia and Europe
3503-915: The Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century. The border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is usually placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains , although it is sometimes placed further north. The border between Asia and Oceania is usually placed somewhere in the Indonesia Archipelago , specifically in Eastern Indonesia . The Wallace Line separates
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3616-596: The century of humiliation , with the British-supported opium trade and later Opium Wars resulting in China being forced into an unprecedented situation of importing more than it exported. Foreign domination of China was furthered by the Japanese colonial empire , which controlled some of East Asia and briefly much of Southeast Asia (which had earlier been taken over by the British, Dutch and French in
3729-638: The monsoons will experience more flooding. The waters around Asia are subjected to the same impacts as elsewhere, such as the increased warming and ocean acidification . There are many coral reefs in the region, and they are highly vulnerable to climate change, to the point practically all of them will be lost if the warming exceeds 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). Asia's distinctive mangrove ecosystems are also highly vulnerable to sea level rise . Asia also has more countries with large coastal populations than any other continent, which would cause large economic impacts from sea level rise. Water supplies in
3842-524: The overhead of traditional malls (i.e., long enclosed corridors). Another issue was that the growth-crazed American commercial real estate industry had simply built too many nice places to shop—far more than could be reasonably justified by the actual growth of the American population, retail sales, or any other economic indicator. The number of American shopping centers exploded from 4,500 in 1960 to 70,000 by 1986 to just under 108,000 by 2010. Thus,
3955-553: The steppes . The earliest postulated expansion out of the steppe is that of the Indo-Europeans , who spread their languages into West Asia, South Asia, and the borders of China, where the Tocharians resided. The northernmost part of Asia, including much of Siberia , was largely inaccessible to the steppe nomads, owing to the dense forests, climate and tundra . These areas remained very sparsely populated. The center and
4068-767: The 17th century, the Manchu conquered China and established the Qing dynasty . The Islamic Mughal Empire (preceded by the Delhi Sultanate of the 13th to early 16th century) and the Hindu Maratha Empire controlled much of India in the 16th and 18th centuries respectively. Western imperialism in Asia from the 18th to 20th centuries coincided with the Industrial Revolution in the West and
4181-528: The 1990s, with extreme poverty now below 20%; India and China's rise has coincided with growing tension between the two, with the Indo-Pacific now an actively contested area between China and counterbalancing forces. Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It covers 9% of the Earth's total surface area (or 30% of its land area), and has the longest coastline, at 62,800 kilometres (39,022 mi). Asia
4294-610: The 600,000 square foot Highland Mall will be a campus for Austin Community College . In France , the So Ouest mall outside of Paris was designed to resemble elegant, Louis XV -style apartments and includes 17,000 square metres (180,000 sq ft) of green space. The Australian mall company Westfield launched an online mall (and later a mobile app) with 150 stores, 3,000 brands and over 1 million products. The COVID-19 pandemic also significantly impacted
4407-587: The 7th century; Islam also spread over centuries to the southern regions of India and Southeast Asia through trade along the Maritime Silk Road . The Mongol Empire conquered a large part of Asia in the 13th century, an area extending from China to Europe. Before the Mongol invasion, Song dynasty reportedly had approximately 120 million citizens; the 1300 census which followed the invasion reported roughly 60 million people. The Black Death , one of
4520-647: The American market in 2022, the United States had an average of 24.5 square feet of retail space per capita (in contrast to 4.5 square feet per capita in Europe). In 2019, The Shops & Restaurants at Hudson Yards opened as an upscale mall in New York City with "a ' Fifth Avenue ' mix of shops", such as H&M , Zara , and Sephora below them. This is one of the first two malls built recently, along with American Dream in which both opened in 2019 since City Creek Center . Online shopping has also emerged as
4633-594: The Asian and Wallacea biogeographical realms, a transition zone of deep water straits between the Asian and Australian continental shelves. Weber's Line split the region in two with regard to the balance of fauna between Asian origin or Australo-Papuan origin. Wallacea's eastern boundary with Sahul is represented by the Lydekker's Line . The Maluku Islands (except the Aru Islands) are often considered to lie on
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4746-606: The Asian goods traffic is carried out across the Pacific towards Los Angeles and Long Beach . The melting of the Arctic is also paving the way for new shipping routes from Northeast Asia to Europe and North America. In contrast to the sea routes, the Silk Road via the land route to Europe is on the one hand still under construction and on the other hand is much smaller in terms of scope. Intra-Asian trade, including sea trade,
4859-756: The Bering Strait, with Big Diomede in Russia and Little Diomede in the United States . The Aleutian Islands are an island chain extending westward from the Alaskan Peninsula toward Russia's Komandorski Islands and Kamchatka Peninsula . Most of them are always associated with North America, except for the westernmost Near Islands group, which is on Asia's continental shelf beyond the North Aleutians Basin and on rare occasions could be associated with Asia, which could then allow
4972-476: The Gruen-designed Southdale Center , which opened in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minnesota , United States in October 1956. For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of the twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell . The first retail complex to be promoted as a "mall" was Paramus, New Jersey 's Bergen Mall , which opened with an open-air format on November 14, 1957, and
5085-417: The Hittite king Tudhaliya I around 1400 BCE. Roughly contemporary Linear B documents contain the term aswia ( Mycenaean Greek : 𐀀𐀯𐀹𐀊 , romanized: a-si-wi-ja ), seemingly in reference to captives from the same area. Herodotus used the term in reference to Anatolia and the territory of the Achaemenid Empire , in contrast to Greece and Egypt. He reports that Greeks assumed that Asia
5198-424: The Indian Ocean respectively in the late 15th century. The Russian Empire also began to expand into northwestern Asia from the 17th century, and would eventually take control of all of Siberia and most of Central Asia by the end of the 19th century. Among non-European empires, the Ottoman Empire controlled Anatolia, most of the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans from the mid 16th century onward, while in
5311-597: The International Council of Shopping Centers, is a shopping mall with over 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m ) of gross leasable area, three or more anchors, mass merchant, more variety, fashion apparel , and serves as the dominant shopping venue for the region (25 miles or 40 km) in which it is located. Not classified as malls are smaller formats such as strip malls and neighborhood shopping centers , and specialized formats such as power centers , festival marketplaces , and outlet centers . Shopping centers in general may have their origins in public markets and, in
5424-482: The Middle East has been affected since 1948 by the Arab–Israeli conflict and American-led interventions . East Asian nations (along with Singapore in Southeast Asia) became economically prosperous with high-growth " tiger economies "; China, having undergone capitalistic reforms under Deng Xiaoping , regained its place among the top two economies of the world by the 21st century. India has also grown significantly because of economic liberalisation that started in
5537-450: The Middle East, covered bazaars . In 1798, the first covered shopping passage was built in Paris, the Passage du Caire . The Burlington Arcade in London was opened in 1819. The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island , built in 1828, claims to be the first shopping arcade in the United States. Western European cities in particular built many arcade-style shopping centers. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, which opened in 1877,
5650-400: The Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century led to the Middle East also being contested and partitioned by the British and French. With the end of World War II in 1945 and the wartime ruination of Europe and imperial Japan, many countries in Asia were able to rapidly free themselves of colonial rule. The independence of India came along with the carving out of a separate nation for
5763-504: The Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Asia has three main financial centers: Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore. Call centers and business process outsourcing (BPOs) are becoming major employers in India and the Philippines due to the availability of a large pool of highly skilled, English-speaking workers. The increased use of outsourcing has assisted the rise of India and the China as financial centers. Due to its large and extremely competitive information technology industry, India has become
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#17328026151405876-445: The Philippines. China has many languages and dialects in different provinces. Many of the world's major religions have their origins in Asia, including the five most practiced in the world (excluding irreligion ), which are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion (classified as Confucianism and Taoism), and Buddhism. Asian mythology is complex and diverse. The story of the Great Flood for example, as presented to Jews in
5989-440: The Red Sea over the Suez Canal into Mediterranean (see also: Indo-Mediterranean ), there via Haifa, Istanbul and Athens to the upper Adriatic to the northern Italian hub of Trieste with its rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe or further to Barcelona and around Spain and France to the European northern ports. A far smaller part of the goods traffic runs via South Africa to Europe . A particularly significant part of
6102-454: The U.S. state of Alaska as well as the United States itself to be considered a transcontinental state. The Aleutian Islands are sometimes associated with Oceania, owing to their status as remote Pacific islands, and their proximity to the Pacific Plate. This is extremely rare however, due to their non-tropical biogeography, as well as their inhabitants , who have historically been related to Indigenous Americans . St. Lawrence Island in
6215-407: The US as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen /US$ . Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim , known as the Asian tigers , which are now all considered developed economies, having among
6328-405: The United States after World War II , with larger open-air shopping centers anchored by major department stores, such as the 550,000-square-foot (51,000 m ) Broadway-Crenshaw Center in Los Angeles , built in 1947 and anchored by a five-story Broadway and a May Company California . In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the term "shopping mall" was first used, but in the original sense of
6441-406: The United States were considered to be "dying" (40% or higher vacancy rates) and nearly one-fifth of all malls had vacancy rates considered "troubling" (10% or higher). Some real estate experts say the "fundamental problem" is a glut of malls in many parts of the country creating a market that is "extremely over-retailed". By the time shopping mall operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield decided to exit
6554-432: The United States, Persian Gulf countries , and India, the term shopping mall is usually applied to enclosed retail structures (and is generally abbreviated to simply mall ), while shopping center usually refers to open-air retail complexes; both types of facilities usually have large parking lots , face major traffic arterials , and have few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighborhoods. Outside of North America,
6667-400: The United States, developers such as A. Alfred Taubman of Taubman Centers extended the concept further in 1980, with terrazzo tiles at the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey , indoor fountains, and two levels allowing a shopper to make a circuit of all the stores. Taubman believed carpeting increased friction, slowing down customers, so it was removed. Fading daylight through glass panels
6780-518: The area of multinational corporations , but increasingly the PRC and India are making significant inroads. Many companies from Europe, North America, South Korea and Japan have operations in Asia's developing countries to take advantage of its abundant supply of cheap labour and relatively developed infrastructure. According to Citigroup in 2011, 9 of 11 Global Growth Generators countries came from Asia driven by population and income growth. They are Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Mongolia,
6893-424: The basement dining rooms. A common feature of shopping malls is a food court: this typically consists of a number of fast food vendors of various types, surrounding a shared seating area. When the shopping mall format was developed by Victor Gruen in the mid-1950s, signing larger department stores was necessary for the financial stability of the projects, and to draw retail traffic that would result in visits to
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#17328026151407006-404: The border of southeast Asia, with the Aru Islands and Western New Guinea , to the east of the Lydekker's Line, being wholly part of Oceania, as both lie on the Australian continental plate. Culturally, the Wallacea region denoted the transition between Austronesian and Melanesian people , with varying degrees of intermixing between the two. In general, the further west and coastal a region is,
7119-421: The construction of any more. Out-of-town shopping developments in the UK are now focused on retail parks , which consist of groups of warehouse style shops with individual entrances from outdoors. Planning policy prioritizes the development of existing town centres, although with patchy success. Westfield London ( White City ) is the largest shopping centre in Europe. In Russia , on the other hand, as of 2013
7232-432: The continent of Asia". Geographically, Asia is the major eastern constituent of the continent of Eurasia with Europe being a northwestern peninsula of the landmass. Asia, Europe and Africa make up a single continuous landmass— Afro-Eurasia —and share a common continental shelf . Almost all of Europe and a major part of Asia sit atop the Eurasian Plate , adjoined on the south by the Arabian and Indian Plate and with
7345-416: The country were in attendance. One newspaper wrote that "Good things are happening in Old Town". By the 1980s, the area had already started resembling what it looked like before the revitalization, due to the fact that the city didn't remedy the high unemployment and poverty in Old Town. A few unsuccessful attempts were made to bring life back to the area, one involved tearing down the Bel Air Market to build
7458-443: The cultural borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus, a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system (Europe, Africa, Asia) on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between them. For example, Sir Barry Cunliffe , the emeritus professor of European archeology at Oxford, argues that Europe has been geographically and culturally merely "the western excrescence of
7571-537: The dethroning of India and China as the world's foremost economies. The British Empire first became dominant in South Asia, with most of the region being conquered by British traders in the late 18th and early 19th centuries before falling under direct British rule after a failed 1857 revolt ; the 1869 completion of the Suez Canal , which increased British access to India, went on to further European influence over Africa and Asia. Around this time, Western powers started to dominate China in what later became known as
7684-420: The east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa; and to the east of the Turkish straits , the Ural Mountains and Ural River , and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black seas, separating it from Europe. Since the concept of Asia derives from the term for the eastern region from a European perspective, Asia is the remaining vast area of Eurasia minus Europe. Therefore, Asia
7797-439: The easternmost part of Siberia (east of the Chersky Range ) on the North American Plate . The term "Asia" is believed to originate in the Bronze Age toponym Assuwa ( Hittite : 𒀸𒋗𒉿 , romanized: aš-šu-wa ) which originally referred only to a portion of northwestern Anatolia . The term appears in Hittite records recounting how a confederation of Assuwan states including Troy unsuccessfully rebelled against
7910-428: The end of 2011, there were 18,000 Asian people mainly in Southeast Asia, China and Japan who have at least $ 100 million in disposable assets, while North America with 17,000 people and Western Europe with 14,000 people. With growing Regional Tourism with domination of Chinese visitors, MasterCard has released Global Destination Cities Index 2013 with 10 of 20 are dominated by Asia and Pacific Region Cities and also for
8023-413: The equatorial south via the hot deserts in parts of West Asia , Central Asia and South Asia , temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in North Asia . The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal , the Gulf of Suez , the Red Sea , and the Bab-el-Mandeb . This makes Egypt a transcontinental country , with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and
8136-652: The equivalent of a U.S. mall, are located in city centres, usually found in old and historic shopping districts and surrounded by subsidiary open air shopping streets. Large examples include Westquay in Southampton ; Manchester Arndale ; Bullring Birmingham ; Liverpool One ; Trinity Leeds ; Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow ; St James Quarter in Edinburgh ; and Eldon Square in Newcastle upon Tyne . In addition to
8249-414: The first time a city of a country from Asia ( Bangkok ) set in the top-ranked with 15.98 million international visitors. East Asia had by far the strongest overall Human Development Index (HDI) improvement of any region in the world, nearly doubling average HDI attainment over the past 40 years, according to the report's analysis of health, education and income data. China, the second highest achiever in
8362-815: The geography prevents building outward or there are other restrictions on construction, such as historic buildings or significant archeology . The Darwin Shopping Centre and associated malls in Shrewsbury , UK, are built on the side of a steep hill, around the former town walls; consequently the shopping center is split over seven floors vertically – two locations horizontally – connected by elevators, escalators and bridge walkways. Some establishments incorporate such designs into their layout, such as Shrewsbury's former McDonald's , split into four stories with multiple mezzanines which featured medieval castle vaults – complete with arrowslits – in
8475-506: The highest GDP per capita in Asia. Asia is the largest continent in the world by a considerable margin, and it is rich in natural resources, such as petroleum , forests , fish , water , rice , copper and silver . Manufacturing in Asia has traditionally been strongest in East and Southeast Asia, particularly in China, Taiwan , South Korea, Japan, India, the Philippines, and Singapore. Japan and South Korea continue to dominate in
8588-851: The inner city shopping centres, large UK conurbations will also have large out-of-town "regional malls" such as the Metrocentre in Gateshead ; Meadowhall Centre , Sheffield serving South Yorkshire ; the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester ; White Rose Centre in Leeds ; the Merry Hill Centre near Dudley ; and Bluewater in Kent . These centres were built in the 1980s and 1990s, but planning regulations prohibit
8701-594: The late 1960s. The enclosed shopping center, which would eventually be known as the shopping mall, did not appear in mainstream until the mid-1950s. One of the earliest examples was the Valley Fair Shopping Center in Appleton, Wisconsin , which opened on March 10, 1955. Valley Fair featured a number of modern features including central heating and cooling, a large outdoor parking area, semi-detached anchor stores, and restaurants. Later that year
8814-583: The late 19th century), New Guinea and the Pacific islands ; Japan's domination was enabled by its rapid rise that had taken place during the Meiji era of the late 19th century, in which it applied industrial knowledge learned from the West and thus overtook the rest of Asia. One significant influence on Japan had been the United States, which had begun projecting influence across the Pacific after its early-to-mid-19th century westward expansion . The breakup of
8927-516: The lowlands did not have enough open grasslands to support a large equestrian force; for this and other reasons, the nomads who conquered states in China, India, and the Middle East often found themselves adapting to the local, more affluent societies. The Islamic Caliphate 's defeats of the Byzantine and Persian empires led to West Asia and southern parts of Central Asia and western parts of South Asia under its control during its conquests of
9040-728: The majority of South Asian Muslims , which in 1971 further split into the countries Pakistan and Bangladesh ; Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union strained relations between India and Pakistan and affected Asia more generally. The end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union by 1991 saw the independence of the five modern Central Asian countries. Some Arab countries took economic advantage of massive oil deposits that were discovered in their territory, becoming globally influential, though stability in
9153-499: The mall. Later, police arrested two men in connection with the shootings. Starting in 2016, developers from the Baltimore area emerged with plans to restore the area, capitalizing on the proximity to Johns Hopkins Hospital . Some plans include restoring Gay Street through the mall to increase business opportunities from car traffic. The redeveloped site could include new housing, office, and commercial space, and it could also include
9266-571: The mall. The challenge of this type of mall is to overcome the natural tendency of shoppers to move horizontally and encourage shoppers to move upwards and downwards. The concept of a vertical mall was originally conceived in the late 1960s by the Mafco Company, former shopping center development division of Marshall Field & Co. The Water Tower Place skyscraper in Chicago , Illinois was built in 1975 by Urban Retail Properties. It contains
9379-516: The most devastating pandemics in human history, is thought to have originated in the arid plains of central Asia, where it then travelled along the Silk Road . European involvement in Asia became more significant from the Age of Discovery onward, with Iberian-sponsored sailors such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama paving the way for new routes from Atlantic Europe to Pacific Asia and
9492-691: The name of the complex (such as Toronto Eaton Centre ). The term mall is less-commonly a part of the name of the complex. The International Council of Shopping Centers , based in New York City , classifies two types of shopping centers as malls: regional malls and superregional malls. A regional mall, per the International Council of Shopping Centers, is a shopping mall with 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m ) to 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m ) gross leasable area with at least two anchor stores . A super-regional mall, per
9605-716: The northern Bering Sea belongs to Alaska and may be associated with either continent but is almost always considered part of North America, as with the Rat Islands in the Aleutian chain. At their nearest points, Alaska and Russia are separated by only 4 kilometres (2.5 miles). Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks , being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not exactly correspond to
9718-499: The number of dead malls increased significantly in the early 21st century. The economic health of malls across the United States has been in decline, as revealed by high vacancy rates. From 2006 to 2010, the percentage of malls that are considered to be "dying" by real estate experts (have a vacancy rate of at least 40%), unhealthy (20–40%), or in trouble (10–20%) all increased greatly, and these high vacancy rates only partially decreased from 2010 to 2014. In 2014, nearly 3% of all malls in
9831-470: The peripheries were mostly kept separated by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus and Himalaya mountains and the Karakum and Gobi deserts formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could cross only with difficulty. While the urban city dwellers were more advanced technologically and socially, in many cases they could do little in a military aspect to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However,
9944-432: The prior year. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, both open-air and enclosed centers are commonly referred to as shopping centres . Mall primarily refers to either a shopping mall – a place where a collection of shops all adjoin a pedestrian area – or an exclusively pedestrianized street that allows shoppers to walk without interference from vehicle traffic. The majority of British enclosed shopping centres,
10057-708: The regional division of Asia. The following subdivision into regions is used, among others, by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). This division of Asia into regions by the United Nations is done solely for statistical reasons and does not imply any assumption about political or other affiliations of countries and territories. Asia has extremely diverse climate features. Climates range from Arctic and subarctic in Siberia to tropical in southern India and Southeast Asia. It
10170-693: The remainder of the country in Africa. The threefold division of the Old World into Africa, Asia, and Europe has been in use since the 6th century BCE, due to Greek geographers such as Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni river) in Georgia of Caucasus (from its mouth by Poti on the Black Sea coast, through
10283-403: The retail industry. Government regulations temporarily closed malls, increased entrance controls, and imposed strict public sanitation requirements. High land prices in populous cities have led to the concept of the "vertical mall", in which space allocated to retail is configured over a number of stories accessible by elevators and/or escalators (usually both) linking the different levels of
10396-435: The single largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the 21st century, while India is the third-largest. As a whole, Asia currently accounts for 36% of world's primary energy consumption, which is expected to increase to 48% by 2050. By 2040, it is also expected to account for 80% of the world's coal and 26% of the world's natural gas consumption. While the United States remains the world's largest oil consumer, by 2050 it
10509-470: The smaller stores in the mall as well. These larger stores are termed anchor stores or draw tenants. In physical configuration, anchor stores are normally located as far from each other as possible to maximize the amount of traffic from one anchor to another. There are a reported 222 malls in Europe. In 2014, these malls had combined sales of US$ 12.47 billion. This represented a 10% bump in revenues from
10622-605: The stronger the Austronesian influences, and the further east and inland a region is, the stronger the Melanesian influences. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception. The chief factor in determining which islands of the Indonesian Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of
10735-544: The terms shopping precinct and shopping arcade are also used. In the UK, such complexes are considered shopping centres though shopping centre covers many more sizes and types of centers than the North American mall . Other countries follow UK usage. In Canadian English , and often in Australia and New Zealand, the term mall may be used informally but shopping center or merely center will feature in
10848-608: The threat of heatwaves across the entire continent. Heatwaves lead to increased mortality, and the demand for air conditioning is rapidly accelerating as the result. By 2080, around 1 billion people in the cities of South and Southeast Asia are expected to experience around a month of extreme heat every year. The impacts on water cycle are more complicated: already arid regions, primarily located in West Asia and Central Asia , will see more droughts , while areas of East , Southeast and South Asia which are already wet due to
10961-541: The top 5 being in Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul . Around 68 percent of international firms have an office in Hong Kong. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economy of China had an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. According to economic historian Angus Maddison , India had the world's largest economy during 1000 BCE and 1 CE. India was the largest economy in the world for most of
11074-533: The two millennia from the 1st until 19th century, contributing 25% of the world's industrial output. China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history and shared the mantle with India. For several decades in the late twentieth century Japan was the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1990 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as
11187-476: The various empires there (not all European). Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of 'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process." The Bering Strait and Bering Sea separate the landmasses of Asia and North America , as well as forming the international boundary between Russia and the United States. This national and continental boundary separates the Diomede Islands in
11300-681: The word "mall", meaning a pedestrian promenade in the U.S., or in U.K. usage, a "shopping precinct". Early downtown pedestrianized malls included the Kalamazoo Mall (the first, in 1959), "Shoppers' See-Way" in Toledo , Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach , Santa Monica Mall (1965). Although Bergen Mall opened in 1957 using the name "mall" and inspired other suburban shopping centers to rebrand themselves as malls, these types of properties were still referred to as "shopping centers" until
11413-489: The world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power for much of recorded history, with the highest GDP per capita until 1500. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia
11526-408: The world in terms of HDI improvement since 1970, is the only country on the "Top 10 Movers" list due to income rather than health or education achievements. Its per capita income increased a stunning 21-fold over the last four decades, also lifting hundreds of millions out of income poverty. Yet it was not among the region's top performers in improving school enrollment and life expectancy. Nepal ,
11639-554: The world's first fully enclosed shopping mall was opened in Luleå , in northern Sweden (architect: Ralph Erskine ) and was named Shopping ; the region now claims the highest shopping center density in Europe. The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen . This new generation of regional-size shopping centers began with
11752-587: The world's population. Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe , and of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa . In general terms, it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean , on the south by the Indian Ocean , and on the north by the Arctic Ocean . The border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct , as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. A commonly accepted division places Asia to
11865-643: The world, which is in the "very high human development" category), followed by Singapore (9), Japan (19) and South Korea (22). Afghanistan (155) ranked lowest amongst Asian countries out of the 169 countries assessed. Asia is home to several language families and many language isolates . Most Asian countries have more than one language that is natively spoken. For instance, according to Ethnologue , more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia, more than 400 languages spoken in India, and more than 100 are spoken in
11978-417: Was here. But, when the post-war era beckoned families to the suburbs, Gay Street suffered greatly. The population near the street fell, and Old Town became one of the poorer areas of the city. Without its customer base, the shops on the street were forced to close or adapt to the new customer demographic. The Baltimore riot of 1968 was a turning point in the area. The City of Baltimore used the devastation as
12091-522: Was historically defined by European academics. In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Ural Mountains as the border of Asia. Tatishchev announced that he had proposed the idea to von Strahlenberg. The latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until
12204-766: Was home to some of the world's earliest known civilizations, each of them developing around fertile river valleys. The civilizations in Mesopotamia , the Indus Valley and the Yellow River shared many similarities. These civilizations may well have exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel . Other innovations, such as writing, seem to have been developed individually in each area. Cities, states and empires developed in these lowlands. The central steppe region had long been inhabited by horse-mounted nomads who could reach all areas of Asia from
12317-518: Was larger than its predecessors, and inspired the use of the term "galleria" for many other shopping arcades and malls. In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping center was created away from downtowns . Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square , Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and Country Club Plaza , Kansas City, Missouri (1924). The suburban shopping center concept evolved further in
12430-768: Was later enclosed in 1973. Aside from Southdale Center , significant early enclosed shopping malls were Harundale Mall (1958) in Glen Burnie, Maryland, Big Town Mall (1959) in Mesquite, Texas, Chris-Town Mall (1961) in Phoenix, Arizona, and Randhurst Center (1962) in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Other early malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtowns into the largely residential suburbs. This formula (enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became
12543-477: Was named after the wife of Prometheus , but that Lydians say it was named after Asies , son of Cotys, who passed the name on to a tribe at Sardis . In Greek mythology , "Asia" ( Ἀσία or Ἀσίη ) was the name of a " Nymph or Titan goddess of Lydia". The Iliad (attributed by the ancient Greeks to Homer ) mentions two Phrygians in the Trojan War named Asios (an adjective meaning "Asian"); and also
12656-426: Was supplemented by gradually increased electric lighting, making it seem like the afternoon was lasting longer, which encouraged shoppers to linger. In the United States, in the mid-1990s, malls were still being constructed at a rate of 140 a year. But in 2001, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that underperforming and vacant malls, known as "greyfield" and "dead mall" estates, were an emerging problem. In 2007,
12769-442: Was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Hinduism , Zoroastrianism , Judaism , Jainism , Buddhism , Confucianism , Taoism , Christianity , Islam , Sikhism , and many other religions. Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from
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