In the urban fabric of Mexico City, shopping malls have emerged as emblematic sites of both visibility and anonymity, spaces where the production of urban life intersects with regimes of consumption and controlled interaction. These spaces, while privately owned and commercially oriented, paradoxically function as public arenas where bodies move, perform, and negotiate identity through the act of being seen and seeing. Drawing from microsociological and ethnographic methods, the study reveals that malls like Parque Delta and Centro Santa Fe are more than centers of retail—they are stages for a specific kind of urban experience, one shaped by architectural design, marketing strategies, and users’ embodied practices. While often perceived as sanitized and decontextualized, these environments stimulate diverse relational dynamics, from scripted encounters to spontaneous gestures of sociality. The mall thus becomes a hybrid zone, neither fully public nor entirely private, fostering a unique form of urbanity anchored in sensory perception and symbolic display. A clear instance is the architectural layout of Centro Santa Fe, designed to emulate a controlled yet open environment, where users—regardless of their social class—navigate spaces laden with visual cues that guide behavior and evoke aspiration, all while maintaining a degree of detachment emblematic of modern urban life.
Hernández Espinosa, R., 2017. Visualidad, urbanidad y consumo: producción microsocial del espacio en dos centros comerciales de la Ciudad de México. URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 7(2), pp.55–70.
