In Manila, malls aren't passe – they are the city itself | Cities | The Guardian

That, perhaps, comes as more of a surprise than anything to westerners, particularly to an American such as myself, coming as we do from places where big, fully enclosed shopping centres, many of which have already undergone demolition, have become symbols of the increasingly passé, automobile-bound and fear-driven cold war era of urban planning.
In the postwar years, Manila repurposed jeeps, those most utilitarian American vehicles, into an iconic, useful, and flamboyant form of transit. Today, in the same improvisational manner, it has repurposed malls, those most tired of all American structures, not by building them as a substitutes for the city, but by building them as the city itself.
via In Manila, malls aren’t passe – they are the city itself | Cities | The Guardian.