VIDEO SOLUTION FOR THE QUESTION:
Direction for the questions 13 to 18: The passage below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.
This year alone, more than 8,600 stores could close, according to industry estimates, many of them the brand name anchor outlets that real estate developers once stumbled over themselves to court. Already there have been 5,300 retail closings this year… Sears Holdings–which owns Kmart–said in March that there’s “substantial doubt it can stay in business altogether, and will close 300 stores this year.” So far this year, nine national retail chains have filed for bankruptcy.
Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the e-commerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter.
But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car- heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America’s public square for the last 60 years.
So what happens when it disappears?
Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court. As far back as ancient Greece, societies have congregated around a central marketplace. In medieval Europe, they were outside cathedrals. For half of the 20th century and almost 20 years into the new one, much of America has found their agora on the terrazzo between Orange Julius and Sbarro, Waldenbooks and the Gap, Sunglass Hut and Hot Topic.
That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn’t: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers, Air Jordans.
A growing number of Americans, however, don’t see the need to go to any Macy’s at all. Our digital lives are frictionless and ruthlessly efficient, with retail and romance available at a click. Malls were designed for leisure, abundance, ambling. You parked and planned to spend some time. Today, much of that time has been given over to busier lives and second jobs and apps that let you swipe right instead of haunt the food court. Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, ‘were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don’t exist.’
QUESTION-13: The central idea of this passage is that:
A. the closure of malls has affected the economic and social life of middle-class America.
B. the advantages of malls outweigh their disadvantages.
C. malls used to perform a social function that has been lost.
D. malls are closing down because people have found alternate ways to shop.
Answer: (C)
Explanation for the Question:
Refer to the following lines: That mall was an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism peddling everything you needed and everything you didn’t: Magic Eye posters, wind catchers, Air Jordans… Malls, says Harvard business professor Leonard Schlesinger, ‘were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don’t exist.’
Option C Is the correct answer in this case. It essentially captures the essence above. The author is primarily highlighting how malls are no longer performing the function they were; the passage revolves around this central theme.
This is a tough question. You need to careful with the other answer options in this case.
Option A commits one mistake: it highlights middle-class America and by doing so, implies that the passage is written from the perspective of one particular class. This is clearly not the case here.
Option B is about the advantages and disadvantages of malls whereas the passage is about the closure of malls and how they social function they perform is no longer in play.
Option D simply highlights that the malls are closing down because of one specific reason, relating to shopping alone. In the passage, the author talks about our digital lives as well as online shopping; the passage is not restrictive in the sense that it only focuses on one issue. This option just highlights that people have found alternate ways of shopping. Also, the option does not highlight what the alternative is.
