The rise of the shopping mall (or centre, as the British still tend to call them) brings out blotches on the skin of angry country conservatives and urban liberals alike. They are regarded by such groups in much the same way as TV-watching was in the 1960s. Few people seem to have a kind word to say about them, at least in public, and even less admit to visiting them on a regular basis. J G Ballard links them to popular fascism in his novels. Zombie films are set in them, the marauding ghouls implicitly representing their drone-like crowds of customers. They have become a byword for unthinking consumerism. "Soulless" is the word that is habitually trotted out to describe them. They are viewed by some not even as a necessary evil but as part of a destructive force which, along with residential gated communities, is gradually privatising the public space, an enemy of the all-hallowed principle of "diversity" in everything which, while remaining undefined, must not be questioned. Underlying all of this there is a barely disguised contempt for the people who visit them and who, heaven help them, might actually do so enthusiastically. If I were to be socially profiled by your average retail marketing company, I should emerge as a staunch enemy of these places. I don't particularly enjoy shopping and loathe the way in which it has become fetishised. I get my spiritual uplift from going to the odd gallery and become wistful at the sight of a medieval ruin in the early evening sunlight. I write for Standpoint, for God's sake.

Yet, I enjoy going to the mall. I should know that I am not alone (a quarter of a billion people have visited Bluewater in its ten years) but still, I find myself standing up for them when the critical onslaught starts. One reason is simply that I have never had a bad experience in one. This is to say that I have not been mugged, queue-jumped, verbally abused or vomited over at closing time. I have not felt the sense of hostility which underlies life on too many an old-fashioned high street now. This might be hard to understand if your local high street is Marylebone in London or Burnham Market in Norfolk, but for many suburban areas in particular it is the reality and one which is pushing people into their cars and on to the nearest covered-in complex. On a visit to Westfield recently, I asked a number of people what the attraction was and they replied, it was clean, orderly, safe ("although," added one woman, "I'm not so sure I'd feel that about the surrounding area.") There's no doubting that it's about convenience too. My journey time by car from a corner of south-east London into the West End has doubled in the past ten years. Using public transport might, if you're lucky that day, be quicker. But this, too, has become an experience fraught with small incivilities and nuisances from which there is no apparent protection.

The delights of the traditional shopping destinations of the capital are, for many people, becoming harder and harder to fathom. In the past decade, as the country has undergone what amounts to a massive social experiment in terms of population increase, they have also taken on an air of crowded unfamiliarity. Far from being the anonymous canyons hated by their critics, places such as Bluewater, for better or worse, offer social familiarity to many, even on a subconscious level. Young families, in particular, have virtually vanished from the streets of London in recent years. Yet they are out in force at Bluewater. Similarly, on a recent visit to MetroCentre, it was astonishing to see how many very young children there were - enough, in fact, to populate a biggish audience for a "science-can-be-fun" event being laid on for them in one of the central courts. This would be impossible in many city centres now and not just because of the threat of bad weather. Public spaces of the old sort have become places to manoeuvre through, not relax in and enjoy.