Power center (retail) in the context of "Indoor shopping mall"

A strip mall, strip center, strip plaza, shopping village or simply plaza is a type of shopping center common in North America and Australia where the stores are arranged in a row, with a footpath in front. Strip malls are typically developed as a unit and have large parking lots in front. Many of them face major traffic arterials and tend to be self-contained, with few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighborhoods. Smaller strip malls may be called mini-malls, while larger ones may be called power centers or big box centers. In 2013, The New York Times reported that the United States had 65,840 strip malls. In 2020, The Wall Street Journal wrote that in the United States, despite the continuing retail apocalypse that started in around 2010, investments and visitor numbers were increasing to strip malls. In 2024, the number of strip malls in the United States had grown to more than 68,000 nationwide.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, such malls are called retail parks or retail outlets. They are usually located on the outskirts of towns and cities, and serve as an alternative to the high street in the UK or main street in Ireland. Retail parks have become popular due to the widespread use of cars and the ability to park close to the shops as opposed to restricted parking on high streets, many of which are pedestrianised.

A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term mall originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, it began to be used as a generic term for the large enclosed shopping centers that were becoming increasingly commonplace. In the United Kingdom and other countries, shopping malls may be called shopping centres.

In recent decades, malls have declined considerably in North America, partly due to the retail apocalypse, particularly in subprime locations, and some have closed and become so-called "dead malls". Successful exceptions have added entertainment and experiential features, added big-box stores as anchors, or converted to other specialized shopping center formats such as power centers, lifestyle centers, factory outlet centers, and festival marketplaces. In Canada, shopping centres have frequently been replaced with mixed-use high-rise communities. In many European countries and Asian countries, shopping malls continue to grow and thrive.

A retail park is a type of shopping centre found on the fringes of most large towns and cities in the United Kingdom and other European countries. Retail parks form a key aspect of European retail geographies, alongside indoor shopping centres, standalone stores like hypermarkets and more traditional high streets. They are a similar retail model to the North American power centers, neighborhood shopping centers and strip malls.

Cushman & Wakefield define a retail park as any shopping centre with mostly retail warehouse units, of a size 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) or larger.

Potomac Yard is a neighborhood in Northern Virginia that straddles southeastern Arlington County and northeastern Alexandria, Virginia, located principally in the area between U.S. Route 1 and the Washington Metro Blue Line /Yellow Line tracks, or the George Washington Memorial Parkway, depending on the definition used. The area was home to (and takes its name from) what was once one of the busiest rail yards on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The "Potomac Yard" name is also used to refer to several developments in the area, especially the Potomac Yard Center power center and a Washington Metro station.

In 2018, Amazon.com, Inc. announced plans to locate part of its "HQ2" second headquarters project in Northern Virginia, specifically in the newly re-branded cross-jurisdictional neighborhood of National Landing, which local and state officials said would include Potomac Yard as well as nearby parts of southern Arlington, including the Crystal City neighborhood that will be the hub of the HQ2 development. Amazon initially planned to split HQ2 between National Landing and Long Island City, New York, but opposition from New York officials led Amazon to cancel that portion of the project, leaving National Landing as the only HQ2 site.