
The Mall Lives - samclemens
http://www.full-stop.net/2016/05/25/features/essays/alex-cocotas/the-mall-lives/
======
mohn
I just returned to the USA after two weeks in Singapore, and I found this
article quite poignant.

In the downtown area near Suntec/Raffles city, it feels like everything at
ground level is a mall (aside from a few historical buildings). Below ground
level, there are extensive malls connecting large buildings in the area. As a
pedestrian, it's nice to get out of the sun and skip the long waits at the
crosswalks, but I did not relish all the time spent in a mall atmosphere.

I stayed in a different neighborhood for the second half of the trip and it
was nice to get away from the glitzy, high-end malls of downtown. I ended up
encountering even more malls though! They were smaller, older, and more run-
down but they were numerous and packed in tight. Many of the construction
sites I saw there were for new malls.

The malls do provide a refreshing air-conditioned space when it's unbearable
outside, but it was hard for me to get excited about them other than that. If
you will be traveling to Singapore soon and you don't enjoy Western malls,
good luck in your planning.

~~~
ChillyWater
Exactly what I saw during my stays in Singapore for the last six months or so.
How can there be so much retail? The only thing I could figure is that maybe
there is nothing else to do ...

You can't work around the house on the weekend (because you can't afford a
house). You don't go RV-ing for the weekend (because the are no RVs or places
to take them). You don't go to the lake cabin (because you can't afford one).

I don't know, I must be missing something.

------
sgnelson
I found this article to be way too long and rambling. I could be wrong, but I
think the author also suffers a bit from focusing on too small and unique
samples. You can use New York, LA, San Fran, (even a suburb of Tel Aviv) etc,
as examples, but these are not representative samples of your average American
community (be it any community large enough to (at least previously) support a
mall). Even in areas where there is no true urban center, or the urban center
remains essentially deserted, Malls are still dying at a phenomenal rate.

The Internet and technology, has largely killed the mall. Teenagers, for
example, no longer need to go to the mall to exchange gossip and be "seen."
They also have high amount of disposable income. (see: millennials and car
usage for similar changes in a market) And Shopping online has become too easy
for many people.

The malls that have been able to survive is due to the fact that they are more
about entertainment (including shopping as a form of entertainment, such as
"build-a-bear" and the like) rather than any other reason. This is one of the
reasons that the city centers that have been re-developed have been
successful. They're not urban shopping centers, they're urban entertainment
centers that happen to have shopping.

There are other reasons that malls have been struggling as well (Suburban
sprawl is a big one, especially due to factors such as in part, the Concentric
Zone Model [0] (as housing stock gets older, and population increase, many
persons move further out to newer/better/larger housing stock, and the
previously housing is then taken up by a lower socio-economic class, which may
no longer be able to support the local mall. So far, this has been repeating
for the past 50ish years.)

The Mall may live, but they're on life support.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model)
note: There are problems with concentric zone model, but it's a model, it can
still be good for explanations, especially in this case.

~~~
maxsilver
> Even in areas where there is no true urban center, or the urban center
> remains essentially deserted, Malls are still dying at a phenomenal rate.
> The Internet and technology, has largely killed the mall. The Mall may live,
> but they're on life support.

Is this true? Current data largely supports the opposite argument.

There's no trend of malls (in general) going away, but of _old_
/overbuilt/poorly-located malls dying (or their market dying) while new malls
(or new types of malls) are being built. Most major markets are experiencing
retail growth (net positive total retail sqft market-wide), despite many bad
malls dying off.

> They're not urban shopping centers, they're urban entertainment centers that
> happen to have shopping.

Malls have always had a significant amount of entertainment. Nearly every
major mall has had (and still has) a movie theatre and multiple restaurants.
Some of folks may even remember a time when almost every mall had an arcade in
it.

[http://www.costar.com/News/Article/As-Retail-Finally-
Enters-...](http://www.costar.com/News/Article/As-Retail-Finally-Enters-
Recovery-More-Investors-Backing-Malls-High-End-Shopping-Centers/177006)

[http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/may/08/costar-...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/may/08/costar-
strip-malls-retail-recovery/)

The "dead mall" story is a lot like pointing at Detroit or Flint or Baltimore
and saying, "look at all those boarded up homes. Housing is dead! People hate
having a place to live.". That may certainly be true in those specific areas,
but most markets are actually experiencing modest-to-insane amounts of growth.

~~~
jhbadger
Malls (at least in the traditional form) really are going away in the US.
There hasn't been a new enclosed mall built in the US since 2006.
([http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-dying-breed-the-american-
shopp...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-dying-breed-the-american-shopping-
mall/)), and many have closed and are closing. Retail isn't going away of
course, but not using the mall model. Typical of what is popular now is the
"Power Center"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_center_(retail)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_center_\(retail\))).

~~~
maxsilver
A strip mall (or "power center") is still a mall.

~~~
jhbadger
Not culturally. The idea of a mall as a pseudo-public space where people would
go on weekends just as a place to kill a few hours needs the enclosed part. A
"strip mall" is a place where you park, go to the one store you want, and
drive off.

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CM30
This sort of article makes me wonder whether the 'decline of malls' is more to
do with the culture and geography of the US than anything specifically related
to shopping malls themselves. Because they're also (at least from what I can
tell) doing pretty well in Europe as well, with the popular ones in the UK
seemingly just going from strength to strength and quite a few new ones
opening up thanks to the Westfields brand.

Indeed, in parts of London (and quite a few towns in outer London), the
shopping centre basically is the high street.

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peterkshultz
Compare this to coverage from the Times about the decline of malls in America:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-
and...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-and-
nostalgia-of-dead-malls.html)

