SHOPPING COMPLEXES HAVE BEEN EVOLVING FOR 5000 YEARS

Implications: This article is important because it serves as a good example of the increasing waves of mindless blather that floods our retail real estate industry. It is generally created by by young writers who just discovered that malls are changing and feel compelled to write about this amazing phenomenon. 

The readers of GLG news need not waste their time on this type of naive prattle because there are simply too many more important developments in our industry to pay attention to. 

Analysis: As the title suggest, shopping complexes have been evolving ever since the first couple of farmers and camel merchants decided to get together to sell their wares in a central marketplace on the same day. The notion that the definition of malls "is becoming blurred" is actually silly.

I can remember the same type of article appearing in the early 1960s as malls started taking the place of downtowns as a major new marketplace. It happened again in the early 1980s as Wal Mart and others started replacing the downtown areas in towns that were too small to support a regional mall.

So what does an article like this mean? I submit that because it is simply not "actionable" for the GLG News reader, it should take its rightful place at the bottom of the bird cage.