Mall of Kuwait: Oh, Dear

The past couple of days of my life have been completely wasted (well, not quite wasted, let's say spent) online just checking stuff out. Hey, I've given myself the week off after the exceptionally hectic month I've had! Anyway, I'm not sure how but at some point this morning I ended up on the Tamdeen Real Estate Company (Kuwait) website. They're the people who brought you Fanar and the Al-Kout/Manshar cluster. They are now apparently working on something called 360˚ Kuwait in South Surra, and the Mall of Kuwait in Sabahiya:

This is getting ridiculous. How many malls does such a small country with less than three million people need? And it's like each new one that comes along tries to outdo the last one. So they're just going to keep getting bigger and bigger. My only consolation with all of this is that at least they've stopped reclaiming land from the sea to build these monostrosities (probably because there's no coastal land left to reclaim - but I won't get into that again).

The reason I'm writing about this is to share with you the blurb on the Tamdeen website about the Mall of Kuwait. The points I would like to highlight here are in bold.

Located between the two main highways linking Kuwait City to the south, the Mall of Kuwait in the Sabahiya area will have a massive retail area of 150,000 square meters. Designed to capture the imagination of the nation, it will be surrounded by gardens, water bodies and some of the most extensive leisure and dining facilities. The mall will have a hypermarket, five anchor stores, the world’s best brands and spectacular entertainment facilities. It will integrate the ethos and culture of Kuwait, making it a cultural hub for the community. When the Mall of Kuwait opens, it will become an iconic landmark for Kuwait and a fitting tribute to the country’s grand vision.

Of course there are the obvious questions that one can ask in connection with the opening of yet another mall of this grotesque size in Kuwait: how many hypermarkets does Kuwait actually need (360˚ is having one too), how many Starbucks' are going to open in this place, how much extra stock does H&M have at the end of every season, etc. Also, how many of those big hideous clown bouncy things are going to ruin the gardens, water bodies, and leisure facilities? But let's forget about all that. They wanna open yet another mall, let them.

But who else is hanging their heads in shame right now at the thought of being part of a nation whose "imagination" gets "captured" by the sight of 150,000 square meters of retail space? Who else is humiliated that the "ethos and culture of Kuwait" is defined by shopping, coffee, and food? Does anybody else find it troubling that the "cultural hub" for our "community" is going to be a shopping and entertainment centre that probably won't even have a bookstore? An "iconic landmark for Kuwait"? Landmark in whose eyes? The tourists who will come flocking across the southern border to shop in Sabahiya?

And finally, it will be a "fitting tribute to the country's grand vision." Sadly, I think this statement is actually true. This is Kuwait's grand vision. It's all about shopping malls and satiating the short attention span of its population. You know, this mall will probably be completed around the same time as the new National Library on the Gulf Road in Kuwait City. I bet that for every one person that enters the National Library, 500 people will be walking into the Mall of Kuwait. We all know which one I'll be living in!