Are our giant retail malls on their way out? About 1 000 delegates to the SA Council of Shopping Centres' retail conference held in Sandton last week were told that a worldwide trend to reject the enclosed world of shopping centres was spreading to SA.

"People want an authentic, open air street life," retail trend consultant Cheryl Adamson told the conference.This was punctuated by the announcement this week that the owners of
Johannesburg's icon precinct, Melrose Arch, are to add a R1bn retail extension to their high street. SA's big retailers, including Woolworths, Truworths and Foschini, participated in the design of the street, part of which will be glass-covered. But Adamson cites a countertrend unique to SA - the emerging black middle class. Its members are devoted to shopping for their branded goods at the large malls. The rest, she adds, want the life of the streets, where they can meet and mix with like-minded people at pavement cafés rather than at
the malls' chainstores.

Even the owners and tenants appear to prefer doing their shopping and entertainment away from malls. The delegates to the retail conference, among them centre owners, retailers, consultants, brokers and researchers, were asked how often and where they did their convenience shopping and eating out. Only 14% said they shopped at supermarkets in malls. Adamson quoted Paco Underhill, author of The Call of the Mall, who says the world has entered a post-mall era of pedestrian-friendly, authentic high streets.

But retail expert Wolf Cesman, director of Madison, whose listed property funds include Hyprop, owner of SA's biggest centre, Canal Walk, pours cold water on this. "We are a nation of mall shoppers," he says.