The 1950’s birthed the age of Shopping Centers.  Above are the first two centers that came about in the early 1950’s.  First you have the Northgate Shopping Center in Seattle and below is Shoppersworld in Framingham Mass.  There centers were the first to offer full line branches of downtown stores into one center.

The 1950’s sparked the era of mass consumption.  As you can see in the graph above growth in consumer borrowing had an annualized growth rate of 6.7% from 1950-69.  Some of the major drivers of this was due to post-war spending and the idea that the US finally broke free from the depression from a mental aspect.  This period was also a time with very low unemployement and an increase in income resulting in mass consumption and the rise of places such as shopping centers as seen above.