SIMULATED CITY: FROM COMMERCIAL STREETS TO MALL CORRIDORS

Abstract

Squares, sidewalks, streets, monuments, that is how we could describe the morphology of a city, especially its public spaces. The same terms could also allude to the forms of the internal structure of a mall, since the city is the reference for your project. In this sense, this paper aims to discuss the relationship between the mall and the city, interpreting it as a rationalized simulation of the urban space. The discussion is developed based on a bibliographical review that allows us to understand this phenomenon in a general way, but also based on the situation that is particular to Fortaleza city. It is revealed, therefore, that the shopping mall induces and is a sign of important transformations in the urban order, promoting another relationship with the city, because it elaborates and satisfies new urbanity demands now met in its corridors and less and less on the street. It is concluded that, if at first shopping malls have urban space as a reference, extracting their forms and symbols from there to build an ideal city, they soon became models for the real city.