Witold Rybczynski, City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World (1995)

Why doesn't North America have a London or Paris? An architect-critic explains

The American shopping mall emerged in the nineteen-fifties, during which the United States became at once more affluent and less urban. "The postwar period saw much new suburban construction, but just as the subdivision replaced the garden suburb, the shopping village was replaced by the regional shopping center," writes architect-critic-historian Witol…