Born in Austria, he moved to the United States

just before the Second World War broke out

and became an architect.

And he looked at the suburban sprawl that was taking over America

all the people just commuting back and forth, back and forth

between home and work in their cars, and thought that what they needed

was something like the old city centres and downtowns that he knew.

What he needed was a city centre for the suburban sprawl

and what he came up with was the idea for the shopping mall.

'Course, he had some more utopian vision for it.

He thought, oh, this is going to be wonderful,

there's going to be homes, and shops, and schools, and even hospitals,

all working together and being this new space.

Unfortunately, money and politics got in the way of his utopian visions

and what you ended up with, twenty years later when the idea crossed the Atlantic,

was this: Brent Cross Shopping Centre,

described by a friend of mine as "Hell on Earth on a Saturday".

It's the reason I've been driving around looking for a parking space for about half an hour.

Now, Victor Gruen did not want this.

He did not want these temples to consumerism

with every psychological trick in the book designed to get you to buy.

One of those psychological tricks got named after him:

the Gruen Transfer, the idea that there are a few seconds after you walk in

with all this new stimulus, where your brain just gets a little bit confused

and almost hypnotises you into buying more.

Doesn't matter whether it's true -- it's probably not, the evidence is shaky,

but what matters: it was named after him.

And at that point, he was railing against what he called

these "bastard" offspring of his original idea.

Well, this is what we've ended up with.

He died in 1980, at a point where there was a new shopping mall

opening in the United States roughly every week or so.

Which was not what he wanted...

...but things have changed.

Economic downturns and the rise of the internet

mean that now a lot of those old malls are closing down.

And the new spaces that are popping up in their path?

They're a lot more like his original designs.

They're pedestrianised high streets, and they're big, open spaces

with actual space to sit down that isn't just convincing you to buy.

From beyond the grave, Victor Gruen might have the last laugh.

Not that that helps me, when that guy just took the last parking space.

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