Yao Li

Yao Li

Newbury Street and the Copley and Prudential malls both serve roughly the same purpose – commercial shopping – but do have vastly different impacts and experiences. In general, Newbury seems target younger and less affluent consumers and Copley/Prudential older, more established ones, simply by way of the kinds of shops in each location – bookstore-cafes, Newbury Comics, and Deluca’s Market vs. Dior, Gourmet Boutique, and Express, for example (although Starbucks, as one would expect, is ubiquitous).

This dynamic is reflected in every characteristic of these places. Newbury Street is located outside in open air, sharing pedestrian space with cars and residential sections and other businesses (e.g. Beacon Realty), while Copley and Prudential are entirely enclosed and only accessible by pedestrians (except that one strip with the indoor birds and trees), and they contain almost only shops (and banks so people can get more money to shop). Newbury is largely a small-scale renovation of a street with existing four-story red brick buildings, or at least designed to look that way, while the Copley-Prudential complex consists of huge, grandiose structures of glass and steel and marble and linoleum. The regulars at Newbury tend to be students and local community members, while the regulars at Copley and Prudential tend to be middle- or upper-class business people (many of whom probably work but don’t in the immediate area) and occasionally their families. The very plan of these commercial centers have different influences – Newbury’s linear one-street plan echoes the gridiron and egalitarianism, while the cross and nodal plans of Copley and Prudential reflect churches, palace gardens, and the concentration of power.