A strip mall? I'm sure you have them in Oz, but apparently they go by a different name. It's essentially a shopping mall you enter with your car. Instead of having a massive building with a huge parking lot around it, it's the other way round: a vast parking area with the shops scattered all around. Some of them may be right next to each other, others may stand completely separate in the ocean of parking spaces. As you can guess, it's commercial convenience at the expense of aesthetic appearance, ecology, community, and pretty much everything else.
Now I'm quite curious: what do Aussies call those things?
What are you kidding me? Like drive through shopping? Or do you walk into the shops? If you walk in I suppose we would call it a shopping complex. Wait I have to Google this. I've heard the term but have never thought about it...
Ah okay... They use strip mall to differentiate inside shopping areas to outside ones I guess. We have them... Everywhere, far more common than interior shopping malls which seem to be an American icon... I'm thinking Dawn of the Dead now haha.
Hahaha, no no, you don't drive INTO the stores. You park your car and walk in. But that would be the next step in convenience, I guess. So yeah, shopping complex is probably right.
Interestingly, malls aren't a thing any more these days. Back when I was a teen it was all the rage, and in fact it made sense: hanging out in this big indoor space with lots of shops, the food court, a movie theater, etc... With all that speaks against shopping malls, at least they were a place to socialize. Strip malls (that is shopping complexes!) don't even have that going for them.
I love seeing those derelict, abandoned shopping malls in America.. they are Soo symbolic. And the fact they don't unite community anymore is telling too.
We have drive through bottle ships! We call them a bottle-o.
Oh, I don't think they ever united the community. In fact, they killed downtowns (= city centers) with mom&pop stores and small retailers who could not keep up with the chain franchise big dogs. For a teenager, however, they were kinda like a dream come true. I'm sure you've seen the movie Mallrats.
What are bottle ships? (I know those model ships you build in a bottle... but what do they have to do with malls?)
Lol SHOPS... Typo!
Oh okay, ... hahaha ... like a drive-through liquor store! Yeah, they've got them in Texas. Makes perfect sense, combining alcohol and motorists' convenience!