Week 11 questions: Disneyland and Malls.

Week 11 DAI227 Questions - Topic - THEME PARKS & SHOPPING MALLS


1) In Margaret Crawford's Essay "The World in a Shopping Mall she outlines that 'the size and scale of a mall reflects "threshold demand"' - what is meant by this term?

- Her definition of ‘Threshold demand’ in the essay ‘is the minimum number of potential customers living within the geographical range of a retail item to enable it to be sold at a profit’. In simple words, threshold demand is what allows the mall to make money because of the potential customers in the given location.

2) In the same article Margaret Crawford describes something called "spontaneous malling" - what does this mean?

- There are two meanings when it comes to spontaneous malling. One being that any space can be turned into malls, examples include by putting together places that already exists. It also can be referred to the simple joy/experience of shopping, instead of only the actual act of doing so.

3) According to Michael Sorkin in his essay 'See you in Disneyland', how did Disneyland have its origins?

-When young Walt Disney visited an amusement park in his earlier years, he deemed the place unsanitary basically and decided he could create a better one, and boy did he ever.

4) Michael Sorkin writes in his essay that Disney's EPCOT Center was motivated largely by frustrations Disney felt at his Anaheim CA Park. What were those frustrations?

- Disney was mostly frustrated by the surroundings of his park. He believed the other businesses and establishments were not up to par. simply put, he felt like the other places were cramping his style.

5)In his essay "Travels in Hyperreality" Umberto Eco describes Disneyland as 'a place of total passivity' - what does he mean by this?

- How Eco describes Disneyland a place of passivity, he explains that the customers there are basically ‘robots’. Which is true in someway, people who go there buy, and spend money excessive believing they are in a place of happiness when the whole entire place is controlled and everything is regulated by workers dressed in different outfits at each tour site. By visiting Disneyland, people are experiencing ‘reconstructed truth’.