The paper considers specifics and tendencies of shopping malls development in modern urban space. The following essential attributes of shopping malls were revealed: a unified territory and management system, integrated nature of service, and complex consumer utility. The specifics of a shopping mall as a public space, possessing limited (target) accessibility and reflecting social differentiation of urban residents in the access to infrastructure amenities, were analyzed. The authors marked a promising trend in the development of urban trade spaces, related to their event outfitting that contributes to the growth of positive social effects from investments into urban environment. The main tendencies of the development of trade infrastructure in Russia and Yekaterinburg, consisting in the transition of quantitative intensive market development and its satiation to the stage of qualitative transformation of trade objects in conditions of intense competitive environment and ongoing economic crisis, were revealed. Under these circumstances, the significance of the research of the residents’ behavior and their evaluation of shopping malls is evident. We conducted a representative questionnaire survey among 3570 Yekaterinburg residents on a stratified sample. Based on the results of the survey, we built a rating of urban shopping malls and identified their attractiveness criteria. The rating of shopping malls was calculated on the basis of three indicators: the proportion of the residents, who marked a shopping mall as “often visited”; the number of the city microdistricts from which residents come to the shopping mall; and the proportion of the respondents coming from other microdistricts. The authors concluded that high attractiveness of a shopping mall in urban space is defined by affordability, the wide range of consumer utility, and the convenient location. Social differentiation in visiting shopping malls, conditioned by age and residents’ financial status, was identified. The older the respondents are and the lower the evaluation of their financial status is, the less actively they visit shopping malls, narrowing their choice. The possibility to use the results of the research in management practice, aimed at improvement of existing objects of urban trade and entertainment infrastructure and designing the new ones, was revealed.