During the past few years, shopping malls have continued to sprout up in both the city and the suburbs, occupying almost 3.8 million square meters of space as of September 2014. This number has risen by about one third in the last seven years. About half of this space is within the city boundaries, and the other half is in the suburbs. Many future malls, some larger than 200,000 square meters, are currently being constructed; Colliers International
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predicts an extra one million square meters of mall space in the next two years (Colliers International 2014). For example, the 500,000-square-meter Central WestGate is scheduled to open in September 2015 in Nonthaburi Province, a northern province of the BMR. Given the high number of future large malls, this sector’s energy use will continue to grow rapidly for the foreseeable future.