Shopping habits in the United States have changed greatly in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Early in the 1900s, most American towns and cities had a Main Street. Main Street was always in the heart of a town. There were many stores on both sides of the street. Shoppers walked into stores to look at all the products. Besides, some shops offered services. These shops included drugstores, restaurants, shoe-repair stores, and hairdressing shops.
But in the 1950s, a change began to take place. Too many cars had crowded into Main Street, but there were too few parking places. Because the streets were crowded, merchants began to look with interest at the open spaces outside the city limits. Open space is what their car-driving customers needed. And open space is what they got when the first shopping centre was built. Shopping centers has lots of small new stores away from crowded city centers. And the growing popularity of shopping centres led to the building of bigger and better stores. During the late 1970s, many shopping centers had almost developed into small cities themselves. In addition to providing the convenience of one-stop shopping, malls were changed into landscaped parks, with benches, fountains, and outdoor entertainment.