“Every town has the same two malls: the one white peo­ple go to and the one white peo­ple used to go to.”
— Chris Rock, quoted in The New York Times

“One rea­son for the malls’ prob­lems is that the sub­urbs have changed. When the South­dale shop­ping cen­tre opened on the out­skirts of Min­neapo­lis, the sub­urbs were almost entirely white and middle-class. Whites were flee­ing a wave of new arrivals from the South (the black pop­u­la­tion of Min­neapo­lis rose by 155% between 1940 and 1960). Although [shop­ping mall pio­neer Vic­tor] Gruen could not bear to admit it, his inven­tion appealed to those who wanted downtown’s shops with­out its pur­ported dan­gers. These days, in Min­neapo­lis as in much of Amer­ica, the eth­nic drift is in the oppo­site direc­tion. The sub­urbs are becom­ing much more racially mixed while the cities fill up with hip, afflu­ent whites. As a result, sub­ur­ban malls no longer pro­vide a refuge from diver­sity.”
— The Econ­o­mist, 22 Decem­ber 2007, p. 103

The phrase “refuge from diver­sity” sticks with me. Is that really some­thing peo­ple need to feel comfortable?