ok, can someone explain this to me?

the mall of america in Minneapolis has been quoted as 'the largest mall in the northern hemisphere'. why is this, when, right on their website, there is a link that quotes the guinnes book of records that states that west edmonton mall (which, last time i checked, was in the northern hemisphere) is in fact the worlds largest mall?

The only way to find out who is the biggest is to run a search for the size of the retail floor
in Square feet .Not the number of stores or how many car parking spaces
The Publicity "Spin " machine will generate all sorts of "favourable" numbers if it's "asked"
The "I'm bigger and better than him " syndrome is a Byproduct of the "Grease my palm with silver? and I'll tell a tale" people
Say no more!

well, i havent been able to track down the exact figures, but i did find out that west ed covers the equivilant to 48 city blocks. (its got 2 levels).
and to think, ive walked the entire area of that place more than a few times!

It's probably because of the curvature of the Earth. Further north is always smaller than south... right?

Oh and never forget that everything is bigger and better in the US...

but seriously, there are several ways to count square footage in a building and the way that the Guinness book describes largest may mean in actual volume, area covered or some other calculation... there may be multiple floors at Mall of America that make it a larger shopping mall in area, but not in expanse. It could be figured a lot of different ways...

An example of another controversy is the Sears Tower is supposedly no longer the tallest building, but only because another building built an antennae that is higher than the Sears antennae... Sears still has the highest occupied floor.

the sears tower thing makes me laugh.
oh! look! we have a bigger antaenna! now we're the tallest building!
the sears tower should put one up themselves, and see how far the contest goes.

Hey Lynda, it makes more sense whenyou look at it.

Mattlynda, according to this
http://www.virtualtourist.com/vt/de097/c/28a9/

Edmonton is bigger in square footage.483,000 sq. m. (5.3 million sq. ft.).

Did you know that the longest shopping mall is here in the UK?

It is in the Milton Keynes shopping centre and is 720 metres long, 2369 ft
We have a huge shopping mall right here in Manchester ( 10 miles away)
1 million square feet.
http://www.insulation.kingspan.com/KINS/gallery/11.html