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The original meaning of the word mall was the place where you played "pall-mall", a popular game in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. The object being to get a wooden ball through an iron loop using a wooden mallet. The trees on the side being used to stop stray balls. 
In French, the mall was known as the mail, today an obscure landscaping term. The game died out but the tree lined alleys became incredibly popular. Today many cities have them: Pall Mall, the Mall (London), Palmaille (Hamburg), Rue du Mail (Paris), Avenue du Mail (Geneva), etc.
The tree lined alleys were good places to set up stores, hence the modern American English meaning of the word. Here is the famous mail or mall in Uttecht, Maliebaan.
Mails are examples of incredible long term planning, very rare in modern cities and towns today. It takes at least a century before the mail comes into its full effect, and it will last another century. We have Louis XIV and Charles II to thank for many mature mails in Europe.
In Tokyo the most famous mail is the 銀杏並木 in Meiji Jingu Gaien. 300m of perfect beauty planted in 1908 by a generation that knew they would never be able to enjoy the fruit of their own labor. An investment in future beauty the benefits of which we can only fully reap today.
What are we planting today? What are we bequeathing our grand children to repay what our grand parents gave us? Nothing but dead concrete deserts, infrastructure that is crumbling before it is even finished and cities that will hang like dead albatrosses around their necks...
