Mall attack: will Kenya's shopping centre culture endure? Due to an ever present threat of armed thugs, petty theft and a certain sense of lawlessness, shopping centres have filled a void to become one-stop-shops for those who yearn to feel "safe." We are drawn in our thousands, seduced by shopping centres" glittering offerings and glamorous designs, glass lifts, escalators, tiled floors and WiFi access. But the attack should be seen in context of Kenya's economic success story. Visitors, investors, companies have moved to capture a new, fresh, exciting, growing market. Discovery of oil, gas and even water reserves in Kenya and a past infused with historical connections to the West have all contributed to Nairobi being viewed not just as a regional hub but now a commercial centre for sub-Saharan Africa. The city plays host to numerous headquarters for aid organisations, embassies and the UN, who continue to battle poverty and instability in the wider region and, in so doing, the latent terrorist threat. The UN alone employs over 9,000 people in our "green city in the sun" and the past five years have seen around a million square feet of commercial space added to the city skyline annually. In response to such exponential growth, modern apartment blocks have sprung up everywhere filling formerly green spaces and steep river valleys with concrete and glass. Thirties colonial, single-storey houses once set in acres of lush, semi-tropical gardens are all but no more. Cheek-by-jowl, apartment block windows overlook one another and on the city's outskirts more stately gated town house complexes are developed. Every month there are hundreds more cars on the road. We find ourselves in gridlock while Japanese and Chinese contractors implement the government's vision of a new, modern capital that was planned decades ago. Older buildings and museums in the town centre have been left to gather cobwebs. They are superseded by a brand new clutch of satellite shopping centres that majestically orbit the old-fashioned Central Business District at a safe distance, offering aspirational, sanitised social hubs for Nairobi's melting pot of cultures. The Westgate shopping mall, built only six years ago, was the most glittering of them all. Since Kenya entered the fight against al-Shabaab two years ago, Nairobi residents are used to security warnings that flash up periodically on our mobile phones. Now that terrorist brutality has reached into the heart of Nairobi's finest symbol of prosperity and success, will the shopping centre culture endure? Having been a Nairobi resident for the past 10 years, I have witnessed the incredible resilience of Kenyan people and their ability to bounce back quickly after the most harrowing experiences. Noticeably, there are no monuments to commemorate lives lost following the 2007 flawed election. Ghastly periods tend to be swept under the carpet by people eager to forget and move on. How will we remember the lives of Westgate victims and, in future, will we shy away from the shopping centres that represented such "African progress" until the weekend of September 21-22?