Roksolana Pyrtko on How Middle Eastern Shopping Centers Overtook Europe
Over the past decade, a quiet but remarkable shift has taken place on the global retail real estate map. If Europe and the United States once set the standards for planning, service, and conceptual solutions for shopping centers, today the center of innovation is steadily moving to the Middle East. Developments in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are not only growing in scale — they are shaping a new model of shopping malls as multifunctional spaces that combine retail, leisure, urbanism, and technology. Analytical reports by JLL and Knight Frank confirm that in the MENA region, investments in shopping centers remain among the most dynamic in the world. Developers here have the opportunity to design from scratch, use large land plots, implement digital solutions, and create formats that already extend beyond the classical European approach. For the professional community, this means one thing: to understand the future of retail, it is no longer Europe that should b...
