Abstract:
Increasing urbanization has changed the lifestyle of the people living in urban areas and it
can be easily noticed in the commercial sector as well. Now Indian cities are becoming the
hot spots for bigger commercial arcades like Shopping malls and it has been analyzed that
from 2008 to 2015 the number of shopping malls in India increased by up to three times. the
majority of shopping malls are located in metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai and
Bangalore but since 2011 this trend has been altered as now the investors are pulling
towards medium size cities like Bhopal, Rajkot etc. for the development of malls because
the bigger cities already have large number of shopping malls. Due to increase in the per
capita income of people living in urban areas shopping malls are very well accepted, people
the visiting these shopping malls for entertainment as well as for shopping purpose. The
main argument put forward by the proponents of these types of development is the impact
on their adjacent surrounding areas.
The thesis tries to analyze the impact of shopping malls on the surrounding areas. The
impact on commercial activities which includes both formal and informal activities, traffic
and households are assessed. The one kilometer radius has been taken from the malls to
demarcate the study area in which the impacts were assessed. For the purpose of this
study two malls located in Bhopal have been taken namely DB city mall and Aura mall.
Surrounding areas of both the malls are having completely different characteristics from
each other as the surrounding of DB city mall is serving the city as one of main Central
Business District (CBD) and having a mixed type of land use, whereas the surrounding area
of Aura mall having the majority of residential land use.
From the analysis it was found that both the malls are having negative impact on the traffic,
shops and households. Whereas the informal activities are enjoying the perks of opening of
shopping mall. Based on this analysis various suggestions can be given to minimize the
negative effects of these malls. And the theme on which various strategies were suggested
was “to encourage the people to use more and more Public Transportation” as if we can
minimize the traffic in the surrounding area it will automatically address various issues.
