It is not often that the opening of a shopping centre gets the Bond movie premiere treatment. However, in times when there is more window-shopping than actual buying, you need a bit of glitz to get the punters in.

Westfield, the £1.6 billion development that is London's latest glass-and-concrete retail temple, attempting to bring an upmarket touch to Shepherd's Bush, opened yesterday awash with pop icons and corporate stars. The West London site is Europe's largest urban shopping centre and adds 150,000 sq m (1.6 million sq ft) of space to the 1.2 million sq m already planned to compete for a shinking retail pound as Britain lurches into recession.

This year was a record year for shopping centre development and next year is forecast to be the second-busiest since 1990, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the estate agent.

New centres due to open in the next 18 months are expected to add the equivalent of eight Bluewaters — the Kent site that is Britain's second-biggest mall — to the UK's floor space.

Alexander Colpaert, of Cushman & Wakefield, said: “You will see quite a sharp drop in activity after 2009. The current rates aren't viable and a lot of new schemes will be postponed.”

Figures out on Thursday indicated that, at least in the short term, there is little appetite for new shopping malls. Footfall, a measure of the number of shoppers visiting stores, fell 2.2 per cent this month against a year ago, according to Experian, the information company.

Jonathan de Mello, Experian's director of retail consultancy, said: “This year has seen the opening of an unprecedented number of new shopping centres and whilst some have clearly moved their towns up the retail rankings, others have had less of a positive impact, particularly in the current economic climate. For every winner, there is a loser.”

Experts are concerned that, as the economy contracts, the new centres will contribute to killing off high street retailers, rather than adding value.

At Westfield yesterday retailers denied being in a zero-sum game that would merely drain business from the West End and other shopping centres in the South East, but many admitted that there would be knock-on effects.

Sir Stuart Rose, chairman of Marks & Spencer, which has one of the five anchor stores at Westfield, along with Debenhams, Next, House of Fraser and Waitrose, said: “It will take time to get used to it and it may take business away from other areas — maybe Oxford Street and Kensington a bit — but we have taken this into account. We believe in total there's extra business here. And it's a very important part of developing London.”

Rob Templeman, the Debenhams chief executive, expects Westfield to take 20 per cent off sales at Brent Cross shopping centre, North London.

Westfield has positioned itself at the top of the market, with luxury brands, such as Louis Vuitton and Tag Heuer, not normally sited in shopping centres.

Yesterday a host of celebrities was enlisted to bedazzle consumers wary of a looming recession. Free champagne flowed while the 50 concierge staff welcomed visitors. M&S's chairman toured its store with the models Erin O'Connor and Twiggy. Leona Lewis, the X Factor star, urged shoppers to keep spending. Yasmin Le Bon snipped the ribbon at House of Fraser, and Next played host to Dannii Minogue.

Opening Westfield, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, expressed faith in it. “I think there are a great deal of people sitting on piles of money out there willing to invest in some of the wonderful shops here,” he said.

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