We go to shopping centres for more than the shops. They offer somewhere to meet, wander, sit or simply be among other people. What can these commercial spaces teach us about the places we need to feel connected?

Walk into a major Australian shopping centre shortly after it opens on a weekend and something curious is already happening.

People are there.

Some are walking the corridors. Others are drinking coffee, sitting on benches or meeting friends. Teenagers are finding one another. Parents have brought their children. Older people are watching the world go by.

Some will eventually leave carrying shopping bags. Others may buy very little.

We tend to assume people go to shopping centres for an obvious reason: to shop. But what if shopping is only part of the attraction?

What if one of the things shopping centres give us isn’t something we can buy at all – the simple experience of being around other people?

Our social ties are changing

Australians are certainly still socially connected. But some patterns of face-to-face interaction have changed.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2025 General Social Survey found that 53 per cent of Australians aged 15 and over had face-to-face contact with family or friends outside their household at least weekly. That was an improvement on 42 per cent in 2020, during the pandemic, but remained well below the 68 per cent recorded in 2019.

Participation in organised volunteering was also lower: 23 per cent in 2025 compared with 30 per cent in 2019.

These figures do not mean Australians have swapped family gatherings, community groups or volunteering for trips to the shops. The data cannot establish that.

But they do invite a broader question: where else are we getting the everyday experience of being around other people?

One answer may be hiding in plain sight.

Shopping centres keep attracting us

Physical shopping centres remain remarkably busy despite the convenience of online shopping.

Scentre Group, which operates Westfield destinations in Australia and New Zealand, reported 540 million customer visits in 2025, an increase of 2.7 per cent on the previous year.

Of course, visitation figures don’t tell us why people came. Most visitors probably had some combination of shopping, dining, entertainment or services in mind.

But contemporary shopping centres offer far more than shops. They contain cafés, restaurants, cinemas, gyms, health and beauty services, children’s activities and entertainment. They also provide places to walk, sit, meet and watch other people.

Perhaps we should therefore be careful about describing everyone who enters a shopping centre simply as a “shopper”.

A place simply to be

Researchers sometimes describe spaces outside home and work where people gather informally as ’third places'.

Traditionally, we might think of cafés, pubs, libraries, parks or community centres. Increasingly, researchers are asking whether shopping centres perform some of the same social functions.

A 2024 study of more than 100,000 people in Norway found almost 40 per cent visited shopping centres at least weekly. More importantly, substantial minorities identified social reasons for visiting: 29 per cent valued them as places to meet people they knew, 27 per cent as gathering places in their local community and 26 per cent as pleasant places to spend time with family and friends.

Norway is not Australia, so those percentages should not simply be transferred to Australian consumers. But the study points towards something easily overlooked when we think about shopping centres: their role as social infrastructure.

There is an even subtler form of social connection involved.

Imagine sitting alone with a coffee. You aren’t talking to anyone. Around you are conversations, footsteps, children, people meeting friends and strangers passing by.

You are alone. But you are also among people.

Recent qualitative research on shopping centres suggests people can value precisely this experience – being surrounded by others in a lively environment, even without directly interacting with them.

We might call this social co-presence.

Sometimes we don’t need a deep conversation or an organised social activity. We simply want to be somewhere where life is happening around us.

But this space isn’t neutral

Shopping centres make that remarkably easy.

There is generally no membership required, no appointment and no need to introduce yourself. They provide shelter from the weather, toilets, seating, food, entertainment, predictable opening hours – and, importantly, other people.

Someone can arrive alone, spend an hour among hundreds of people and leave without having to explain why they were there.

That is a remarkably low barrier to social participation.

But there is an important distinction between a shopping centre and a public park or library.

The shopping centre is privately owned commercial space. Its purpose ultimately includes generating economic activity.

The longer people stay, the more opportunities they have to encounter stores, brands, advertising, food outlets and other opportunities to consume.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. A place can create commercial value while simultaneously providing a useful social environment.

But it raises a question worth considering: what happens when places designed for consumption also become places where we satisfy our desire simply to be around other people?

Public spaces could learn something

Rather than criticising shopping centres for performing this role, perhaps we should ask what they are getting right.

Australia already has libraries, parks, neighbourhood houses, community centres and other non-commercial places that provide important opportunities for connection.

But do we have enough places where people can simply arrive – without joining something, booking something, buying something or having a particular reason for being there?

For planners, councils and community organisations, shopping centres offer an interesting lesson. Comfortable seating, accessibility, safety, shelter, toilets, food, activities and the reliable presence of other people can make places attractive even when people have no specific transaction to complete.

None of this proves Australians are abandoning traditional community life for shopping centres. Nor does a crowded mall mean everyone there is seeking social connection.

But perhaps we have been asking too narrow a question about these spaces.

The next time you see a crowded shopping centre, don’t just ask:

“What have all these people come here to buy?”

Ask another question too:

“How many have come simply because this is where the other people are?”

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.