2024 NJC SH2 GP Prelims P2 Insert

Name GP Class Reg No. NATIONAL JUNIOR COLLEGE Senior High 2 Preliminary Examination Higher 1 General Paper 8881/02 Paper 2 23 August 2024 INSERT 1 hour 30 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains the passages for Paper 2. ______________________________________________________________________ This document consists of 4 printed pages.

2 © NATIONAL JUNIOR COLLEGE 8881/02/NJC/24 Passage 1. An author writes about the decline of shopping malls. 1 Much has been written on the phenomenon of the collapse of the American mall and the reasons for it. The most obvious – the rise of online retail – is undeniably a significant factor, but it also masks a rot that had been spreading before Amazon gutted brick-and-mortar shops. It is hard to think of any comparable social institution that cost so much and covered so much physical space and then implode d so quickly. As always, the story is far more complex than any tidy summary can encompass. 5 2 The first contemporary, enclosed suburban shopping mall in America – Southdale Shopping Centre in Edina, Minnesota – was built in 1956, and the idea was incredibly successful. The exodus from urban centres to suburbs created an enormous opportunity to fill a vacuum for goods and services in smaller communities. A mall patron could get their hair styled, buy groceries, visit the bank, and enjoy an art installation all in one building. As the concept gained steam, the mall seemed a well of endless novelty – a preeminent showcase of modern architecture and innovative products. As malls flourished, in many communities they decimated urban shopping districts, which by then had come to be viewed by some as outdated and unsafe. 10 15 3 By their heyday in the late 1970s and 1980s, malls seemed like a never -ending source of income. Not only had they established themselves as dominant retail hubs, for developers especially, new malls were built to compete with old ones: bigger, more upscale, or just different. Even though the popularity of malls would continue well through the 1990s, this competition was the key factor that led to the cascade of closures that followed. There were too many malls that cannibalised each other’s customers. Novelty meant that when one mall became dated, there was another one to go to instead. 20 4 The overabundance of suburban malls heralded a subtle but important perceptual shift – by the 2000s, dated and poorly maintained malls were commonplace, and the view of them as sparkling palaces of wonder and delight was fading. It had become trendy to hate them. Department stores were losing the battle for cost-conscious consumers to big box retailers like Walmart, w