3 Reasons Why Malls in Latin America Are Booming (And Why They’re a Problem)
Note: The inspiration from this article comes from a TikTok I made that popped off when visiting El Salvador (where my dad is from.) It has been made much richer and more nuanced thanks to the dozens of comments from Salvadorans, who chimed in with helpful and fascinating perspectives. Gracias a la comunidad salvadoreña por su ayuda indispensable.
IThe popularity of malls in Latin America is one of the strangest urbanism phenomena I’ve come across. As malls have died in the United States they have thrived in countries I’ve visited from El Salvador to Colombia.
If you spend enough time in Latin America, you’ll come to realize how prominent malls are in social and economic life.
In Medellín, Colombia I once took a metro station to a mall. In San Salvador, El Salvador the mall is where I went to get a haircut, buy toothpaste, see a movie, and often just to get lunch.
Urban life in many Latin American cities gravitates and orbits around malls.
But why? And at what costs? Today I’ll share some ideas, based mostly on my observation and conversations with locals.
Why Malls Thrive in Latin America
These reasons all interconnect and become chicken-egg debates. As is often in cities, it’s due to self-fulfilling feedback loops.
Reason #1: A Lack of Actual Public Spaces and Walkable Urban Life
In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs talks about how important mixed-use development is to great vibrant, walkable urban life. “You can’t make people use streets they have no reason to use.”
She writes about important this type of urban design is for not just its use, but also its safety.
The simple reality is most Latin American cities lack the type of mixed-use, walkable public spaces that attract street life.
Parks exist, but convenient parks that are close to dense amounts of housing where people could picnic, walk their dogs, go on runs, and other park activities are hard to find.
I even think of the old-fashioned plaza, which is a charm in cities like Madrid, you can find in the old blueprints of many of these cities, but they’re not the center of public life because of a failure of the surrounding urban design.
(A plaza is only convenient if you can easily walk to it, as I talk about in this article on Urbanism Lessons from Barcelona.)
Without actual public spaces like parks, plazas, and walkable streets, where do people turn?
In Latin America, they turn to the mall.
Reason #2: Safety
Originally, I thought safety would be the top reason for why malls thrive in Latin America. After all, in El Salvador, until a few years ago, violent gangs controlled much of the streets, and you had to know where it was safe to walk.
The mall offered a place where people could walk safely without fears of gangs.
In Colombia, the history is different, but it rhymes. Only in recent decades have its major cities become safer to walk around, after the malls were already in boom.
However, as pointed out by a Salvadoran living Costa Rica in the TikTok comments, malls boom even in Latin American countries without a history of lack of safety in its inner city streets.
This is why I turn back to reason #1 as the first theory. After all, good planning begets safety. As Jacobs says, “the sidewalk and street peace—of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as the police are. It is kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.”
The general lack of sidewalk safety and a place to walk without worry of air pollution and sketchy road crossings may play a bigger role than the gangs (El Salvador) and historical drug trafficking (Colombia.)
Yet, others chimed in to mention that yes, the general lack of safe public spaces due to violence pushed people to the malls.
Reason #3: Built-In Class Segregation
In the U.S., segregation in the 20th century continued through the creation of suburbs. That meant those living in suburbs rarely lived amongst lower-income people, because they were kept out.
In Latin America, instead of suburbs (these cities often feel like one big suburb), they flocked to malls.
Given this context, I think the built-in class segregation is a feature of Latin American malls, not a bug. In my experience of Latin America, your financial class is your social status. Of course, this rings true in the U.S., but not anywhere near to the same extent as Latin America.
If your family has money, you have a personal driver and a maid and you go to a bilingual private school. You live in a separate society from the majority who live off rice, beans, and tortillas live in hand-made homes without proper floors and take the abysmal public transit around.
The prices at malls are often U.S. prices
Meanwhile, the minimum wage in these countries often ranges from $350-$500 per month.
This means that even though the malls are open to the public, what’s actually at the mall is only accessible to the wealthy class.
Malls, in this sense, attract the upper classes of Latin American society, while their high prices keep out the rest. They become their space, away from the other classes, to hang out, shop, and watch a movie.
The Problems With Latin American Malls
Problem #1: Built-In Class Segregation
Yes, this is what I just talked about. It’s both a reason for its popularity, and an underlying problem.
Their cultural importance, their access to goods and services, means that only the wealthy class can get basic urban needs met.
Malls may be marketed as public spaces, but unlike a park, malls exist for profit. They were funded by developers for profit. They are rented out by businesses for profit. If they don’t make a profit, they collapse, as we’ve seen in the U.S.
Malls in Latin America create a stark division between those who can afford to participate in this privatized version of urban life and those who cannot. The culture of malls further exacerbates segregation.
Problem #2: Extreme Waste of Urban Space
Malls are built as a huge sprawl across urban land, often near city centers.
The malls in El Salvador that I’ve gone to use several floors, if not a whole garage, just for parking.
Cities need density to thrive. I love how Edward Glaeser describes what a city is in his book, The Triumph of the City. He writes, “Cities are the absence of physical space between people and companies. They are proximity, density, closeness. They enable us to work and play together, and their success depends on the demand for physical connection.”
Malls, instead of mixed-use districts, fundamentally goes against this. I’ll give Envigado, Colombia some credit. At least they put a metro station in the mall.
Parking is just one example of this waste. Another is how they create barriers. To quote Jacobs again, she wrote about how borders create dead space. “Because few people use the immediate border street, the side streets adjoining it are also less used as a result.”
Encourages Sprawl
The focus on malls reflects a misplaced priority: instead of investing in denser, more sustainable forms of urban growth that could create homes and vibrant neighborhoods, cities are betting on commercial spaces that cater to a select few.
Environmental Destruction
Building these massive complexes of course, destroys the environment too. One commenter mentioned how a Salvadoran mall cut off the fresh water supply to a small town.
This kind of development is particularly troubling in a region like Latin America, where biodiversity is high, and the loss of green space has long-term consequences for both the environment and quality of urban life.
Every mall built often means more roads, more parking lots, and less room for parks, rivers, and the natural landscape that makes these cities unique.
Problem #3: Pedestalizing Western Consumerism
One of the most disheartening aspects of the rise of malls in Latin America is how they perpetuate and reinforce Western consumerism.
I only speak to my experience here, but much of Latin American social life is about status. It’s about where you went to University or what private school you went to, what heavy-hitting family with generational wealth you know (or are a part of.)
Malls are symbols of modernity and affluence. They strengthen this influence.
It perpetuates this culture of status and money.
The brands, the products, and even the experiences offered in these malls are out of reach for the average person, but they become aspirational goals nonetheless. Again, as a few mentioned to me in the comments, poor families often save up to buy things at the mall to appear a part of the middle or upper classes.
If the “nice things” you can buy are only found in the mall, if the “cool” people are all spending their time there, then it’s no surprise that malls become associated with success, wealth, and social status.
This creates a feedback loop: the more malls become central to urban life, the more they reinforce the idea that consumption equals happiness and status. This worldview not only alienates those who cannot afford to participate but also diminishes the value of simpler, more authentic experiences that are often closer to the heart of Latin American culture.
The Loss of Cultural Authenticity
What I love about Latin America isn’t how easy it is to get Starbucks or watch an American movie with Spanish subtitles. What aptivates me are the unique cultural experiences that are far removed from the global consumer culture malls represent. To me, the home-cooked, 80-cent pupusas, the warm, humble smiles of strangers, and the breathtaking landscapes, from surf-ready waves to hikes along volcanoes, are the things that make Latin America special.
However, the emphasis on Western brands, foods, and lifestyles erode local culture. When the local street market struggles to compete with the air-conditioned comfort and brand-name allure of the mall, something essential is lost.
More Malls Are a Symptom of Larger Urban Problems, And Much of Latin America Is At a Crossroads
As the Latin American middle class continues to grow, cities across the region are approaching a critical juncture. The choices made today will shape the urban landscapes of tomorrow, impacting everything from economic equity to environmental sustainability. Will Latin America’s cities grow in a way that’s healthier for their people, their wallets, their communities, and the planet, or will they continue down the path of more malls, more economic segregation, and increased car-dependency that pollutes the air and leads to worse health outcomes.
It’s time for all of us to reread Jane Jacobs, and get back to the basics of building vibrant city neighborhoods.
The High Stakes of Urban Growth
The growth of the middle class brings with it increased purchasing power, but it also brings the responsibility to guide that power towards healthier, more sustainable choices. Every new mall built is a step toward more economic segregation, more car-centric development, and the erosion of public life.
Here’s What Latin America Needs, Not Malls
Here’s what Latin America truly needs to create more inclusive, vibrant, and sustainable urban spaces:
1. Actual Public Spaces: Plazas and Parks
Latin American cities are rich with history, and the bones for great public spaces are already there. Old town squares, plazas, and parks need better and safer access.
Instead of pouring resources into private commercial developments, cities should invest in the restoration and creation of public spaces that are free and accessible to all. These spaces are the heartbeats of a community, where people from all walks of life can gather, interact, and feel a sense of belonging.
These spaces rarely need help, they mostly just need to be allowed to thrive. They need safe streets nearby and they need dense housing so they’re accessible.
If these sound esoteric to you, check out this article where I make that case that we all can and should understand urban planning.
2. Mixed-Use Buildings
Malls concentrate commercial activity into isolated pockets, but real urban vibrancy comes from mixed-use development—where shops and services are integrated into the fabric of everyday life. Imagine a street where the bottom floor of residential buildings is lined with local businesses: a bakery, a tailor, a bookstore. This is mixed-use development, and it’s a key element of creating lively, safe neighborhoods.
3. Investments in Public Transit
Transportation is the lifeblood of any city, but in many Latin American cities, public transit is either insufficient, unreliable, or just not comfortable.
The needs vary by city and country, depending on their region.
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