Westfield and other smaller malls are having an impact on London, a city laid out on an informal village scheme in which residential areas are anchored by "high streets" where shops, banks, restaurants and groceries are found.

Residents can typically walk to the high streets within a few minutes, then hop on an Underground train to commute to work if needed. But high street stores have been losing customers lately, in part because of competition from malls with movie theaters and fancy shops.

"People are willing to travel farther now in order to get a massive cluster of shopping brands," said Keith Bowman, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers.

The mythical southern California lifestyle is evoked by a number of shops - no real surprise in a country experiencing one of its coldest, dreariest summers on record. New York Yankees baseball caps, which have been made trendy by rap mogul Jay-Z, are selling well.

"It's brilliant," said local carpenter Barry Heath, 41, as he shopped with his wife Sharon. "To find any of these shops, we used to have to go into central London, Oxford Street, King's Road, Chelsea, all those places. It used to take me an hour, but now it takes me five minutes."

He said the mall, and the whole Summer Olympics, have helped transform east London, which had long suffered from neglect.

The Olympics run from July 27 to Aug 12, but Westfield will be there for decades.

【Shopping marathon in store at Olympics】相关文章：

★ Soldiers in Mali seize power after attack on palace

★ Bookstores fight back with novel business ideas

★ Free testing for PM2.5 in Shanghai

★ Syrian FM urges foreign journalists to respect rules

★ Shooting suspect quiet as he faces court

★ Bomb, gun attacks kill 107 in Iraq

★ Despite ban, smoking is rampant in Internet bars

★ Hawking says 'look up at stars'

★ Student left in cell for 4 days sues for $20m

★ Two girls commit suicide in pursuit of time travel fantasy