The designation of "ShoppingScapes" tries to focus in a word the meeting of ideas related to the presence and meaning of commercial superstructures that have been spreading throughout the territory, transforming and (re)building the landscape, as well as affecting the development of cities in general. Similarly, the description also applies to a variant of the traditional shopping mall, which generally punctuates the suburban area, appearing as authentic commercial retail hubs, assuming their strange and contradictory condition of noncities, emptying the traditional city centre of characteristic activity with its displacement.
Thanks to such impacts, the presence and positioning of these superstructures is assuming a greater importance in the processes of territory organization and management, together with the emergent questions related with the current economic and financial crisis and the general lack of role models that may best suit these transformations to the new emerging societal paradigm.
However, today we see that urban life is easily confused with the experience of consumption, both being part of the same landscape. It is hard to dissociate the image of a shopping mall from an urban context, or to consider the contemporary city without the world of consumption that this commercial typology provides.
Interestingly, it turns out that the areas provided by these shopping structures appear not to be merely dedicated to consumption. In the theatrical and simulated environment of its "streets" and "squares" - free recreations of the structuring elements of the historic city - one can wander, eat, drink, rest and consume symbols and goods. But, as a product of globalization, symbol of a hyper-modernity, isn't the "shopping centre" a sign?
Presently, the current and transversal context of an economic and financial crisis has implied a clear shift in how we relate to these structures, not only by inducing changes in consumer habits, but also in terms of its urban presence and representativeness, affected by the questioning of the economic viability and sustainability of the model they represent. It is thus demonstrated that the shopping centre, despite presenting itself as a product of the typological evolution of a fundamental constituent of the landscape and urban activity, does not represent a permanent or unchanging formula, but rather a flexible piece of limited duration that, much like the factories of older times, might become one of the futures brownfields for urban expansions and retrofits of a city yet to come. We should reflect on situations which have already found an echo in the example of the dead mall, particularly on the logic underlying their changing processes.
This international conference will debate the following issues: The focus on major issues that formalize the listed aspects, in particular the possible concepts and interpretations behind the idea of a shoppingscape, the process of its evolution as a model and a typology, the relationship with the territories and the planning management, the social and cultural dynamics that it has been promoting and the considerations on its possible future. This event will be held in May 2013 (27 to 29), in the Institut Français du Portugal and at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, in Lisbon (Portugal).
