THE PEDESTRIAN MALL AS THE HEART OF THE CITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE LIJNBAAN ON THE POST-COLONIAL CAPITAL BUILDING ERA, GABORONE MAIN MALL

Abstract

Europe's first pedestrian mall, the Lijnbaan Rotterdam has influenced the creation of numerous pedestrian malls worldwide. Gaborone Main Mall is one of the affected 1960s cases in a southern African city. Through the comparison of formal features between the Rotterdam Lijnbaan pedestrian mall and the Gaborone Main Mall, it was found that the latter had numerous morphological similarities to the former regarding spatial organization with distinctive details. This research explicates the common architectural feature between the two malls to explore the inheritance and transformation of Lijnbaan into the new capital city core during the building period of post-colonial Botswana.