Impact of shopping malls on the surrounding area: case study of Bhopal

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.