Why Shopping Malls Refuse to Die

Some shopping malls have closed, but others remain full and thriving. Why? And can adaptive reuse breathe new life into dying malls while making them mixed use urban centers?

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Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
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[davidpierce]

One of the worst things about old-school malls were that all the chain stores were exactly the same in every mall. If you get a bunch of local stores in there instead it becomes a lot more interesting.

[Himeyasha]

Japan is literally every major train station is a shopping mall, just need to make it an actual destination. You go to the top floor to eat out, you go for entertainment you go for everything else.

[jijitters]

As someone who's lived near the Mall of America my whole life, I deeply believe walking around without a plan is a great leisure activity and more malls need to embrace adding more things to Do inside other than shop. Make a whole day of it.

[s]

Here in Australia many malls have a public library, doctors, dentist, grocer, bakery, all the basic stuff. Clothing stores come and go, but I think if a mall has the basics it always have a reason to exist.

[davids]

Online shopping isn’t everything. I bought something off Amazon recently that turned out to be a piece of crap. The ability to go to an actual store and see the product can be a huge advantage over getting something online and hoping for the best.

[fernbedek]

Malls are just covered pedestrian arcades that have existed for centuries. The interior is genuinely top tier urbanism. Just do it like Canada: give them a role as a transit hub (and turn the parking lots into high rises apartments with some offices).

[phoebe_cincotta]

I live in Lyon, France and we have the biggest mall in France in the heart of downtown. The Westfield Part-Dieu is HUGE and always super busy. They’ve been doubling its size since the 2010s as part of a revitalization and pedestrianization process of downtown, including a new skyscraper, the complete renovation of the main train station etc. It was shocking to see how dead the malls were when I went to the US.

[thomashendricks]

The health system my wife works for purchased a shuttered Sears location in the mall and renovated it and converted it into patient offices. This allowed several different specialties to be under one roof. It just opened a few months ago and they are currently renovating the Sears auto location to more patient offices. This is incredibly powerful for their patients. Before their offices were spread out into many different patient offices, now most of them are under one roof. This is also better for patients that allows them to take public transport to the mall. There were no public transports to most of the patients offices before. So this is a win/win for the health system and its patients.

[Noct]

Growing up as a 90s kid, malls were everything to my friend group. There was one a 10 minute walk from our high school, and we'd spend several afternoons a week there just hanging out. It was a safe, clean, stress-free and reliable place for us to be able to just exist without having to spend money for access, which is something kids these days seem hard-pressed to find. I hope malls continue to evolve and can continue to be a healthy "third place" option for years to come.

[seans]

Imo malls in the USA are dying because of non walkable city planing. In Poland, many malls are close to trams/metro and close to center or apartaments. And there are more and more of them.

[michaelimbesi]

Here in Arlington, the Pentagon City Mall is thriving, probably because it has almost relatively little parking, lots of traffic from tour busses stopping at the food court for lunch, and a direct connection to the Metro.

[karenwang]

Malls still have value as a destination to visit. It’s nice to go to my local one and wander around window shopping and watching the people for a couple hours when I don’t have anything to do.

[SirSayakaMikiTherd]

I live right next to The Grove in LA. It's an open air mall with both chainstores as well as pop-ups and boutiques. Right next to it is the Farmers Market. It fits a weird niche between a tourist destination as well as a place for locals to hang out. I think its exactly the type of mall that will always remain relevant.

[CyanideCarrot]

We don't need to leave the era of shopping malls behind. There is a place for lots of physical retail all in one place. But the inside of a quarter-mile wide parking moat is not that place.

[coreyhipps]

Toronto, London, many cities throughout Japan and China, and even in Iceland, have malls attached to transit hubs.
It is always funny to me that US malls struggle as much as they do, where when you have malls that are directly integrated into transit systems you often see large amount of foot traffic and they are not just a collection of shops but social spaces and often times places with a lot of restaurants and eating.

My experience has generally been it's the malls that I do not need a car to get to that have the largest crowds and seem to be thriving.

[s.n.]

In my city, we have a few miles that are thriving and a few that are basically dead.

The successful malls are all surrounded by residential areas, houses, apartments, and businesses as well.

The ones that are suffering are often in the suburbs with nothing around them but a huge parking lot and a few other businesses that you have to suffer through traffic to get through.

It seems location is the most important aspect.

[CalicoreGaming]

I live in San Diego and since they installed a trolley system that connects to most of our malls I've never seen them so busy before. Surprisingly it seems the believed core automobile aspect is easily replaced with public transit. It's always nice to see how busy my local malls are whenever I go :)

[KodieS]

Something that seems to be ignored is that corporate greed contributes to malls closing. Leaseholders raise the rent on a space to unsustainable levels for the average small business, and corporate stores refuse to see their profits decrease as a result of a higher lease payment, so the stalemate leads to stores closing. In my area, Benderson Development seems to own every commercial building in existence. The number of empty buildings tells me they'd rather have them sit empty than charge reasonable lease rates. Whether people like chain stores or not, they do have their place, but their need for more more more helps nobody. Obviously, online shopping has had an impact, but if large retail stores would price fairly without gouging the consumer, more people may be inclined to shop there.

[gophtheengine]

Fun fact: Here in Lima line 1 of the metro connects to various shopping malls along the way. If you're unlucky enough to land in Lima when you visit Peru, try to get to the metro line to see them.
The stations where you get to a walking distance to the shopping malls are the following:
-Los Jardines station: future mall will be built there.
-Pirámide del sol station: Mall aventura plaza is just at a walking distance and currently the area was an old industrial urbanization[from the 80's] being redeveloped.
-Gamarra station: it leads you to GAMA Moda Plaza. Alternatively you can go to Arriola station.
-La cultura station: La Rambla shopping mall is located in front of the station.
-Angamos station: the Real plaza Primavera is adjacent to the station.
-Atocongo station: Mall del sur is just at a walking distance from the station.
So you have 6 out of the 26 stations with a shopping mall nearby.

[Quiblets]

I live in Puerto Rico, a colony of the United States. We have the biggest mall in the whole Caribbean. Plaza Las Americas is a gorgeous mall and that place won't die. The Macy's store is always jammed packed. Zennial mall rats are a thing. Then there are malls that started reusing spaces. So instead of just stores, we have go carts, doctor's offices, art galleries, art expos, artisan fairs, government offices (smaller branches so the big ones don't get filled), and even spaces where people rent out for dancing classes and all other sorts os services to the community.