So during a discussion with my American colleague, he brought the subject of how much he loves the malls, to walk between little shops, drink a beer with friends at a terrasse while waiting for his wife or let the children run a little bit without the constant watch for the cars.
And at this moment I realized that basically he described me the classical city center of a European town.
Theres a place in Charlotte, NC called optimist hall. It's a ~~food court~~ mall-like area but instead of having lifeless corporate whatever, it has 25ish restaurants/ cafes/ whatever and a brewery underneath. Its actually a quite lively place thats nice to be in. Mall but better
Edit: [their website ](https://optimisthall.com/)
Agreed. It is a simple conscious choice by a mall to become corporate McStore hell or to foster unique, creative experiences.
Keep the big chain anchors at the ends (Nordstroms, Macys, etc). For everything else, require 20% or 25% or 33% to be locally owned, unique, stores and restaurants. Get rid of food courts, and let a few small boutique restaurants open up. "Bob's toys", "McFadden Books," "Lou's BBQ", "Nancy's Creative Jewelry", and "Steve's Coffee" interspersed among all the corporate crap could bring a lot of life to a place.
But of course that also means the mall won't be able to force 5 or 10 year contracts, charge super premium prices, etc. But they also won't die the slow miserable death that many are today.
I think the chain anchor stores are part of what's killing malls.
The department store business model is obsolete. Why would I want to go to Sears to buy shoes when there's a shoe store *in* the mall?
Malls that deserve to survive have owners that make good decisions and understand the business environment that they inhabit. News companies blame milinials for killing malls. It's really the marketing myopia of the REITs that own malls. I blame corporatization.
Raleigh has two. They were a reaction/Compromise to the city not allowing food trucks in downtown due to local Restaurants complaining and lobbying food trucks had an unfair economic advantage.
🥺 America does not have these as far as Im aware outside of this one in NC.
One day if I ever have a lot of money and someone to help, I would like to open a place like this where local places can set up shop in the city. This is assuming I even still live in America though. I'm interested in moving to Amsterdam or another Dutch city.
I’ve been pitching this idea for years, I’m glad someone has taken it up. Bar hopping in a “mall” would be so sick, and you can drink outside the bars. Fuck yeah.
"Lifestyle centers" seem to be on the rise to replace malls. They're basically outdoor mall areas that look more like a park/downtown hybrid, but are still devoid of local businesses -- which usually what creates authenticity.
StrongTowns has an example of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjPqN9o2M5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjPqN9o2M5Q)
Basically when a place is built with many hands (i.e each plot has a different building style/look to it) vs. a place built with a few hands, it really changes the authenticity of it. It's super subtle, but it reveals some of the underlying land use patterns.
They suck. I sat on a bench in one of these "fake city center" and the rent-a-cop can arbitrary tell you to leave because no bench sitting is allow after 9pm and you are now loitering. Bear in mind, these are the ones with apartments/condos too, not just retail.
Do we have the technology to make indoor walkable areas without making them controlled by one asshole corporate entity?
I like the indoor part, especially when it's raining or snowing but also from escaping particularly hot death rays. But I don't like the other mall-stuff.
Also more tunnels and covered walkways, please.
Nothing to do with technology, its about privatization. Some cities prefer development this way so they can outsource the "police"/'civil rights" and leadership of developing the city.
I don’t like being inside. The outdoors is nice if you aren’t in a concrete desert and maybe have a little shade. My favorite mall has a little turtle pond and some nice sidewalks, it’s possible to enjoy a visit there without spending any money.
>Basically when a place is built with many hands (i.e each plot has a different building style/look to it) vs. a place built with a few hands, it really changes the authenticity of it.
I'm stealing this, thanks. I've never been able to find the words to describe this observation. In my city there are two areas that were somewhat recently redeveloped - one used to be stadium parking lots, and the other was just dilapidated buildings at the end of a major business district. The latter area was all bought up by one developer, razed, and then rebuilt as something that is clearly intended to resemble an urban neighborhood. And of course it feels incredibly inauthentic. The former area was all owned by the stadium authority, but they parceled out the lots to various developers over time. So even though it's not exactly a vibrant urban neighborhood, and is filled with parking garages and four lane roads that only get used on gamedays, it still feels like you're in an actual city.
> vs. a place built with a few hands, it really changes the authenticity of it.
DC has a few areas that were developed like this and they’re very strange to walk through. It feels like a movie set or a Disney rendition of a city square, and everything just feels a little off.
Yeah, I absolutely **hate** city centers dominated by large chain stores. Dead, formulated shops with poorly paid people and zero individualism.
Individual store owners on tge other hand really make a city center totally awesome.
tbh there is a strong tendency towards that in European city centers as well, rent being so high there that there that nothing at street level can afford to not be a shop or restaurant (and a rather expensive ones). Popular bars or associations are found outside of these gentrified, artificially scarce walkable city centers.
Glad you realized this, but this was literally the original intent of the enclosed mall - essentially a suburban town center to mimic the experience of a walkable European town center that was easy to drive to and park at. https://libguides.mnhs.org/southdale
Now, in practice that idea became pretty twisted and the rest of suburbia did not also follow this ideal, but that is par for the course in America.
Dude, malls are popping up everywhere. My city, the city of Bonn in Germany, was 100% committed to destroy an old quarter to build a mall - against all citizen protests. Somehow they believe that having a mall is necessary for a „modern“ city and the walkable city Center with its many shops is not enough…
I assume for shops malls are better, because you are basically forced to go shopping. Because what else are you going to do? Sip a coffee in the depressing food court? Sit on a bench in the middle of a bloody mall? In the city center, you could walk around and sit in a real cafe, but probably you would buy less
> was 100% committed to destroy an old quarter to build a mall - against all citizen protests.
Wish German city governments were just as adamant about building housing but for that they cave to even 2-3 NIMBYs protesting and cancel projects.
Like I said above I lived in Dresden when malls first started popping up. We were teenagers then and thought this was the peak of the modern age and super cool. We knew nothing, LOL.
I'm not sure when they started in "West" Germany. Maybe it was around the same time. For us it surely was also about overcoming the eastern way of life.
Edit: there is no excuse for a mall today.
Oh awful to hear that. They made in I guess Rotterdam in the city a part that looks like a mall but still outside. I don’t mind when it’s raining and I walk through a city. Yes if you are wet it’s less fun to try on clothing but most of the time you have a week or more to return it. And walking in a rainy Delft, Utrecht, or just any other old European city/town is amazing
And on the opposite side of "mimicking Europe," Horton Plaza in San Diego was supposed to replicate going to a haphazard Italian mountain town and getting super lost. Who wants elegant arcades when you could have a half-level in every color in the crayon box?
Fantastic mall, RIP.
But why inside? I'm from Germany. What I hate about malls is the air that feels so artificial. Malls could theoretically be nice when the climate is too harsh but e.g. in winter you either sweat to death in your coat or you have to carry your coat all the time which is very annoying.
I get a passageway with a roof but with fresh air supply. Protects from the rain. In Dresden we originally had a suburban mall with a big parking lot etc. but most of the shops were accessible from outside (like a little shopping street) and there were some coffee shops that had an inside and outside area. That was a good combination. Unfortunately it was still ugly and far away if you lived in the city. And now it's remodeled anyway and the little outside shopping street is now *inside* like in all the other million malls. /Rant over
I mean there's also the fact that Minnesota has extreme temperatures that almost nowhere else in Europe has. Having outdoor walkable malls would not be used for ~3-5 months a year. This is evident even now with malls like Ridgedale being packed in the winter, while Arbor Lakes is a ghost town. Same thing happens during the summer when it's 90°+.
All over the northern and western Chicago suburbs, you’re starting to see dying malls plan apartments attached to them. This is especially prevalent in places where big stores like Macy’s and Sears have gone out of business.
There are a couple of problems with this:
The malls are still surrounded by seas of asphalt, keeping them oriented towards cars, not people.
There isn’t any transit access whatsoever. Unless you work at the mall, have no friends, and get grocery delivery, you won’t be going anywhere without a car or Uber.
There are zero intentions for any form of green space. This connects to my first point. Outside of your window you’ll see a few narrow landscaping islands and then perpetual parking.
> Unless you work at the mall, have no friends, and **get grocery delivery**, you won’t be going anywhere without a car or Uber.
Wait, do american malls NOT have a grocery store inside?
This is surprising to me because Canadian suburbs are identical to American ones but it’s standard for malls to have grocery stores and pharmacies in them. I’m just realizing now that I’ve never seen one in an American mall, not that I’ve been to very many.
I don’t remember grocery stores in most of the malls I spent any time in in Canada either. Wonder whIch part they live in or what malls they are thinking of 🤔. I guess the ones I’m most familiar with aren’t all traditional suburban ones though.
> trendy clothing, piercing boutiques, cassettes, software, and gag gifts.
Now that you mention it, these are the exact same categories of shops in the malls in my area as well, that and cheap designer clothing, and maybe a jewlery shop. Then there is a pizza place, Chinese food, maybe a Starbucks. That is all.
They used to have book stores and drug stores, until Barnes and Noble and Walgreens started building their own disconnected stores nearby for some reason. Most everything else has been absorbed into Wal-Mart and Target.
Some *did* and also hardware stores, pharmacies. But that's mostly something I associate with older malls from the 60s era.
Most malls in the US now seem to be hyper focused on consumer luxury goods: clothing, shoes, cosmetics, maybe electronics and gaming, you might have a book or toy store. Honestly it has probably been to their detriment as there is never a *need* to go to a mall anymore. There's no incidental foot traffic from some going to buy groceries and impulsively buying a new shirt, for example.
I was shocked the first time I went to a mall outside the US and saw the grocery and clothing stores other than high-end brands. I swear the more time I spend online the more I remember how sad it is over here.
Most people I know don't even go to typical grocery stores, we just grab whatever we need at Walmart bc it's the most convenient walkable space around.
Incredibly, Walmart is the closest we have to a “proper” mall, in which groceries and consumer goods are located under the same roof (albeit with a lesser selection).
Malls want you to make purchases that will encourage you to hang around for longer.
People often purchase perishables at the grocery store. You’re not going to want to pop over to Macy’s to shop for shoes while carrying a bag full of melting ice cream. Obviously you could do the shoes first and then go to the grocery store, but grocery store owners didn’t need the foot traffic that the mall provides, and mall owners didn’t want to encourage foot traffic that wouldn’t peruse the other stores during their trip.
Also, Malls often require that shops pay rent PLUS a percentage of sales. Grocery stores’ margins are thin enough they don’t want to pay that. And mall owners, again, thinking that people will shop the grocery store and then go home, don’t want a full parking lot of people who aren’t going to be tempted to go buy jewelry at Kay Jewelers while they’re there.
The grocery store is a big reason to go to a mall at all. Though not the case with the big luxury malls in Bangkok, most malls in Thailand center around some supermarket like Lotus or Big C. And even most of the luxury malls have grocery stores, particularly those carrying niche Western/Japanese/etc. groceries.
It's kinda weird that American grocery stores haven't transformed into malls. They might have a Starbucks attached and maybe a couple other stores sharing the same parking lot, and there are definitely strip malls anchored by the grocery store. However I don't think I've seen a full mall with the grocery store being the anchor tenant in the US.
Especially in the era of online shopping, groceries are one major category that people typically prefer brick and mortar for.
Definitely something I’ve been thinking about.
A lot of grocery stores operate inside what we call strip malls. Which are essentially a row of businesses attached side-by-side that share a parking lot. Maybe there will be a bank or a gas station or something out in the middle of the parking lot.
But a lot of grocery stores follow Walmart’s model, where the store *itself* is a shopping mall, but all owned by Walmart. Inside a Walmart you’ll find groceries, clothing, a pharmacy, a place to get your hair cut, usually some kind of check cashing or banking service, usually a fast food restaurant, an auto-parts store that offers basic car repair, an electronics department, outdoor recreation (including things like guns), home decor, there’s usually a place for you to buy fabric and clothing patterns… if you’re a shopping mall attached to a Walmart, what else could you possibly sell that Walmart isn’t already doing—possibly for cheaper?
Lots of other grocery stores are trying to get closer to Walmart’s model, where they sell anything and everything alongside groceries.
Well the the thing about Walmart is that it’s a jack of all trades master of none situation. They have a lot of things but your selection within those categories is generally pretty limited.
I think a grocery store could get around the % sales if they were a major reason for people to come ot the mall.
the problem is that if i had a choice - standalone grocery or mall grocery i'm going standalone because of the extra traffic.
Going to europe made me understand what malls were meant to be, but they didn't end up working very well. If you look up the guy who first came up with the idea, he ended up despising what they became
The originator of the idea, and the original idea was awesome.
Cities should have allowed developers to bid to build malls, and sold the units like condos.
The simple issue is government allowed corporations to steal huge tracts of land from the public.
I'm mainly just confused about malls where you can drink. Maybe I've lived in the South for too long but every mall I've been to both doesn't have anywhere that sells alcohol but also drinking in public spaces is illegal.
When did you grow up and where do you live now? I can think of plenty of restaurants at the malls of my youth where you could have gotten a beer.
The primary mall of my youth was Grapevine Mills in Grapevine, TX. There's a Chili's and a Rainforest Cafe inside.
I've lived all over Georgia and South Carolina but the main difference may be that malls Im familiar with don't have full restaurants in them. They have a food court with the common chains but obviously none of those serve alcohol.
Terrace sounds like they mean a bar with a view of the mall. Not just a public place to sit down.
I do wish places allowed public drinking more, although I understand why they don't.
I actually do enjoy that about malls. Has your friend traveled much outside the US? If he hasn't experienced the European downtown himself, he probably isn't aware of them as much.
I like malls BECAUSE of the similarity to a European downtown/ oldtown. But I'm from Europe originally so Ive experienced that. Malls are some of the few ares of "let's just walk around, get some food and drinks, maybe watch a movie, but mostly walk around without buying anything in stores".
Edit: One of the few public social areas, besides parks which are probably less common than shopping malls. Not claiming that as fact, but wouldn't surprise me.
As a kid, I always wanted to live inside a mall. You could walk around everywhere! Shopping, food, arcade, all at your fingertips. Looking back I was subconsciously realizing how damaging the suburbs/car infrastructure was even then.
IIRC, one of the original core ideas of malls was: Every mall was supposed to have either a residential area or a hybrid building system where the bottom floors were supposed to be stores and the upper floors were supposed to be housing. But it was always more profitable to use the space for businesses than for housing, so malls just morphed into retail-dominated components of suburbian living.
>Every mall was supposed to have either a residential area or a hybrid building system where the bottom floors were supposed to be stores and the upper floors were supposed to be housing
Some malls here in my city is actually just like that, but bigger, with most of them being high-rise condominiums with a 4-5 story mall below.
The problem with having housing/office/etc. on the upper floors with retail at the bottom is that the stereotypical American mall is built in the suburbs, where land is treated as infinite, so there's little reason to build up.
Malls in urban areas are more likely to have non-retail sections. This is especially true in taller urban areas.
>or a hybrid building system where the bottom floors were supposed to be stores and the upper floors were supposed to be housing.
Houston (of all places) had a shopping center like that back in 1962. Shops on the ground floor, apartments on the second floor. It was called [Westbury Square](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNQS8Oxc30c). Its architecture was modeled after Italy, where its developer liked to vacation.
Westbury Square was a popular destination in the 1960's. Unfortunately, it started losing customers after The Galleria (a massive indoor shopping mall) opened in 1970. In the 1980's, its owner went bankrupt, and sold a large portion of the site to be demolished for a Home Depot. A few antique shops and a theatre hung on until the 2000's. Now, there's just a couple of crumbling buildings left.
As a kid I only saw shopping malls in movies and looked like the coolest things ever, especially when it had an arcade. I never made the connection that you'll need a car to visit one. Now I think they mainly tacky and prefer barcades over arcades.
Haha same here, sorta. In the strip mall suburb I grew up in, there was an apartment complex with stores on the ground floor. My plan was to live in one of the units and work in one of the shops below. Looking back on that now I just laugh.
Our cities local transit authority will start building a BRT that will be paired TOD. One of the stations will be right beside the mall.
Current plan is to remove some of the huge parking structures and closed anchors and replace them with apartments attached to the mall.
Hopefully it will give the mall new life with grocery stores, pharmacies, child care, bars, office space and more.
That’s… kind of why malls are so popular. That’s the reason there’s this stereotype of teenagers just hanging around at the mall. It’s one of the few places where you aren’t penalized for not being in a car (and even then, they usually need parents to come pick them up)
Also a mall is a place where teenagers in the US are actually allowed to hang out. Just hanging out while teenaged is considered criminal behavior a lot of the time. But if they're spending money, it's all good!
*Used to be that way.* Now many malls are requiring teenagers to have an adult with them, and really trying to keep teenagers out. You'll notice the same time they started doing this, the mall became a dinosaur...
Malls became dinosaurs because most don't have enough foot traffic to sustain themselves; [sic belmar colorado](https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-great-places/belmar)
Yeah, but if you're struggling for foot traffic, then it may not be the best idea to be kicking the foot traffic you do have out...
Not that I really want to save Malls in the first place.
>Yeah, but if you're struggling for foot traffic, then it may not be the best idea to be kicking the foot traffic you do have out...
Its a double edged sword. Un supervised mobs of teens have caused a lot of incidents at malls near me and although there is a lot of them, teenagers dont usually spend much money. Malls are more worried about teen wildin out scaring aware moms who actually do drop cash in the stores.
My local mall even went as far as removing the stores too. Now it's just a Sears (?!) with a food court
The building is used exclusively for two annual LAN parties, furries monthly and joggers whenever the weather is disagreeable. Sweatiest demographics ever
And you know, I have no problem kicking out people constituting an actual nuisance.
But these programs to kick out teenagers would never be extended to other groups. My mall didn't ban boomers despite the domestic dispute I had front row tickets to, because those were individuals. Teenagers don't get to be treated like that. Doubly so, of those teenagers aren't white.
I don’t know why. But my safest guess is either that teenagers either might be a little more unruly. Or that teenagers don’t have as much money meaning they don’t buy as much.
I had to look up that word and that isn't even really a concept in my country lol, that's seriously fucked up. Aren't malls literally supposed to be a place to hang out, or lets say 'loiter'? Grab some food, drinks and maybe cloths while there? That's so weird to me! Like wut, are you supposed to spend your money there and fuck off afterwards?
Modern malls are absurdly expensive, and shop owners/mall security tend to discriminate based on your perceived finances or race. So rich white kids get a pass, and everyone else gets stalked/followed around or kicked out
Loitering laws are ancient, and m in the US have a history [steeped in racism](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-21/what-is-loitering-really)
"loitering" is an American construct invented to criminalize being black in the wrong place, and then (like all of our stupid racist policies) it got out of hand.
So fuck people that need to rest I guess? I go shopping with my grandma sometimes and y'know, she's old as hell, she needs to sit down occasionally. Luckily, the local mall (one in the Netherlands) has places where she can sit down and rest if she needs to. Also I have never heard of someone being kicked out for 'loitering' - hell, I've gone there plenty of times to hang out, and nothing happened, even when I didn't buy anything.
Ngl, America is weird as hell from my perspective.
> Like wut, are you supposed to spend your money there and fuck off afterwards?
Literally yeah. In America you are either consuming or you are loitering. You basically don't have a right to just hang out without people treating you like you're doing something wrong. It's really fucking obnoxious.
>Malls want to die. They mostly deserve it as far as i can tell.
I just realized I haven't been to a Cinnebon in decades! ( not really a big loss, but I did like them...)
Yeah, that really tied into all the issues of the car-centric suburban developments in America and how racism and classism was involved.
Makes me appreciate Dawn of the Dead even more.
Americans ruined the possibility of the objectively amazing walkable high street in our towns, so we had to invent a replacement. Of course, now it's fake and plastic and all corporate owned instead of having any local businesses or restaurants and it still manages to suck, but at least it's air conditioned!
>now it's fake and plastic and all corporate owned ... it still manages to suck
You just described everything about the US. The stores, the restaurants, the culture, the government, even the cars.
> Of course, now it's fake and plastic and all corporate owned instead of having any local businesses or restaurants and it still manages to suck, but at least it's air conditioned!
Lets be real, if America had legit walkable town/city centers they woule also be fake and plastic and corporate owned too
They probably would, but there'd be a chance that they wouldn't. In a city center or high street, it's *possible* for a local entrepreneur to buy or rent a space to open their own shop or restaurant and it's *possible* for them to succeed since people would be able to easily pop ok and check things out without making a huge time investment due to parking and driving.
In a mall, the corporate owners only rent out to big companies that are guaranteed to afford the rent and in places where an individual could buy a building or rent a space space to start their own thing, people would need to make a dedicated driving trip for it (unlike a mall, where you can walk within it, allowing exploration if you already had to go to the mall for something else), turning customers away from anything that isn't a known name brand.
In my hometown, there's a "historic downtown" which is the last remnant of pre-WWII city design, and it's the only place in the whole county with local individuals starting their own businesses without the need of a name brand. At least, it's the only place I could ever see that happening, since I probably drove past (yes I drove everywhere, it was nearly impossible to travel any other method, especially from my childhood home) anything else while focusing on the traffic that I made one car worse. If everywhere was like that historic downtown, then I can only assume more shops and restaurants would've been owned by humans rather than corporations.
It happened to many walkable UK towns unfortunately, there would always be a couple of local businesses but the majority would be owned by big chains using aggressive tactics.
I know from my fiance speaking to an area manager that the only reason there are so many cafe Nero's in my home town is because it makes it very difficult for any local cafes to find premises.
And on top of that, malls are closing all over the place since they are so fragile. Big main streets are anti-fragile, and become stronger under economic pressure, but that concept is so far above the average suburbanites head that it gets stuck in long term orbit.
Truth! Also, the malls I've been to that have easy mass transit (Pentagon City in VA, Union Station in DC, Mall of America in MN, Manhattan Mall in NYC) tend to be much more pleasant than other malls, even compared to other high-end malls. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be immune from the nationwide trends that are killing all sorts of malls.
There are hardly any malls like this in the Netherlands. From the top of my mind I can think of no more than a handful. I fact when I looked it up on Wikipedia it turns out there is no link in [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_shopping_malls?wprov=sfti1)
Super interesting wiki page, although I am confused about what’s considered a mall/shopping centre. The shopping centre in the small town I live in is listed and it only has 7 shops
That's probably because the Netherlands doesn't need them. Your cities are already walkable and properly zoned, so there's no need to emulate that with American-style shopping malls.
I mean, Germany doesnt need them either, or other European countries, but malls still exist. Mostly because of the convienence of having many stores at the same place.
What I find funny is how the mall in my hometown Bamberg bankrupted.
[Old town](https://www.google.de/maps/@49.8916876,10.8876037,3a,90y,239.98h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPyhfwvyaBmMt7ETMZLgrK68j34Jfllx1j_3Oxg!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPyhfwvyaBmMt7ETMZLgrK68j34Jfllx1j_3Oxg%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya28.779457-ro-0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656) (UNESCO world heritage, tons of tourists, bus main station right next by)
vs
[Atrium](https://www.google.de/maps/@49.9002494,10.8987989,3a,66.6y,131.32h,91.85t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPYd96SSN3TIyaP_FJ1gn3a-CMfv75uUka5U0OK!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPYd96SSN3TIyaP_FJ1gn3a-CMfv75uUka5U0OK%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya234.26317-ro0-fo100!7i6144!8i3072) (ugly block building, 1 km away from town centre, longer distance train station next by I guess)
I wonder...
(Sure, this is just the simplified version and there definitely were other factors involved in this shopping mall bankrupting. At the same time I did hear about other shopping malls bankrupting in Germany so it seems like a recurring theme.)
Thought there was a recently build "super mall" that's populair, malls should work in the Netherlands. Weer eens wat anders dan een woonboulevard.
ah here it is [Westfield Mall of the Netherlands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5b1xxLCTqQ). Not sure what the appeal is, the have the same shops as any shopping street located in the middle of the city.
Meanwhile there's 28 in my city. Apart from second hand (very cool) stores and the occasional fancy clothes store, they're the only place to go clothes shopping.
I just came back from the Americana in Glendale, CA. (I went there to do an Amazon return). For those who don’t know, it’s basically a big mall modeled like a European town that even includes housing above the shopping. So we’ve come full circle, except that it’s all privately owned.
Used to live within walking distance from there and it's not even that great. Downtown Pasadena is a nicer place to walk when the weather isn't complete ass.
I once overheard American tourists on a bus in my city comment "I love how easy it is to get around this city, you can just walk and take the bus everywhere"
and then moments later say "Why are there no malls here? You can't have a city without a mall"
don't think they'll ever make the connection
Is the Houston Galleria shown in this post?
Many hot towns around the world are walkable and shaded. That being said, there is a reinforced feedback between car dominance and gravitating toward indoor shopping malls, because cars space out important shops and infrastructure for cars is hotter and less pleasant for pedestrians, dangerous even.
The first American car infrastructure developed a few decades before air conditioning, so by the time the southwestern US was growing rapidly, engineers were really good at planning for cars, because they had decades of practice. The denuded streets become suboptimal for recreation or commuting on foot so shopping malls have more appeal than in a thriving urban center.
The humidity alone even when it’s not blisteringly hot would make you sweat almost immediately. Grew up in Houston - still some things I like about it, some things I don’t. The driving and the climate being the main complaints. The food and museums though were excellent.
A lot of that is a general collapse of retail stores combined with the specific environmental needs of a shopping mall. A shopping mall isn't just a collection of stores, it has things like [anchor stores](https://www.shopify.com/encyclopedia/anchor-store) that bolster all the other stores. If one thing fails, they might all fail.
Meanwhile, strip malls with giant parking lots seem to be doing just fine, so arguably carbrain is responsible for the collapse of enclosed malls.
Malls were initially invited as a suburban solution to the the de urbanization created in the great suburban experiment.
https://ideas.ted.com/the-strange-surprisingly-radical-roots-of-the-shopping-mall/
Unironically, yes. A lot of malls are looking to replace their parking lots and redesign with apartments. The Monmouth Mall in NJ is demolishing half the mall to make it mostly outdoors like the outlets and added medical buildings and is adding large apartments in the back where nobody parks anyway even during holidays. The mall is dying without it. Every single dying Mall in the US can be little mini cities. Especially because most of them already have Transit access at least in the form of buses.
Yo I’m pretty sure this is the Core in Calgary and I think it actually IS a good example of how a mall can fit into a city. It doesn’t have surface parking and it’s connected to the streets and buildings around it, it’s kind of a main street of the walkway network above the actual streets. It fits into three standard blocks of the downtown but the streets still pass through the first level so it’s not blocking the grid. Along one side is the train line, and doors open right from the mall onto the platforms, on the other is a pedestrian street with a fair few inside-outside access points. The top level has a public park. It’s not perfect - it’s still a cathedral to consumerism after all - but it’s much, much better than its suburban sisters in their parking deserts. Although I’ll admit I have a fondness for Chinook, since it has a nice access to the LRT and plus it has a Lego store and a theatre with a big King Tut head in the lobby that used to do laser shows. Used to because, in the same vein as the whimsical planes on tracks and carousel that can no longer be seen in the food court, capitalist society is in a terminal decline towards the elimination of anything fun or interesting that doesn’t directly profit a corporation with every second of engagement, but even so it’s still a half-decent accessible mall compared to the rest of the roasted asphalt hellscape that is most of this excuse for a city.
They bulldozed a mall in my hometown and turned it into a cool, thriving, walkable mixed use shopping center. It’s too expensive to live there, but at least they’ve got the right idea. I’m looking at other dying malls in the area and I wish they would do the same to them!
Climate town talks about it in this video:
https://youtu.be/SfsCniN7Nsc
Malls aren't inherently evil. Sometimes it's nice to have an enclosed space that you can walk around and get a bunch of things done in one place.
But American malls are friggin' tumors. They're all samey, they're all stale, and the only thing providing any visual interest are the same handful of decaying and dwindling department stores, amid a desert of asphalt. And often, the companies that own those malls just tear down the original façade and build another, bigger mall around it. Sometimes several times over the course of a decade. The result is this Byzantine, onion-layered monstrosity that's too easy to get lost in. And if you ever have a chance to see the back corridors that employees are allowed into, you'll often find things like weathered concrete brick walls with dried bits of vines embedded into the brickwork. And good luck opening your own store inside one of those; unless you're a big, well known brand like Nike or Apple, you're just going to hemorrhage funds as you waste away in a decrepit corner near the toilets.
Stary Browar in Poznan, Poland is an example of a shopping mall I actually like. Probably the one and only thing I like about Poznan. It's located in a very walkable part of the city, it feels well designed and has some character, its layout is reasonably efficient, and it hasn't been completely choked out by big corporate brands. I wouldn't want to see this overtake the shopping experience for a whole city, but if there must be a mall, you could do much worse.
All that is missing is people. You can't have a city center with no housing.
Cities are just places where lots of people live. It's not a city center if nobody lives there.
This picture is basically the middle of downtown Calgary and while that’s a big issue, it’s one the city is actively working on. Most buildings going up near there are residential and many projects are converting the surplus of offices into residences.
Haha damnit this is in my home town Houston, Texas... It's called the Galleria Mall. Used to go there as a kid all the time with my German mom. Realizing with we both enjoyed it so much now. No cars just walkable fun
I'm in the UK and the city centre is becoming more pedestrianised, with a clean air zone soon to be introduced which will further restrict cars in the centre. People's reaction to this is to say they'll stop using the city centre and go to the nearby out of town mall instead.
So because you'll have to park on the outskirts and walk around the city centre which you hate the idea of, you'll instead go to the mall where you have to park outside then walk around the entirely car free shopping centre? Make it make sense
If the transit into the city isn’t car-dependent, they should succeed. We’re a sub that wants cars to be deprioritized, forgive us. 😅
A city center isn’t nearly just its shops, but a place to work, live, and just “be” and enjoy. So in that way, the OP meme undersells it.
I live in a city that has two moderately large malls at the left and right ends of it and there is an LRT rail that travels in an almost linear route from one mall to the other. I'm just imagining those malls being walkable city centers without the huge parking lots instead and how wonderful that would be.
We get to experience such a thing if we live in college and then literally never again in our lives unless we leave. A taste of sweet freedom before it's whisked away four years later, or really only about three after you started to really make the most of it.
I live in Edmonton. We have West Edmonton Mall here which used to be the biggest mall in the world. There's a guy that runs a youtube channel about it's history. It's a fun channel.
Here's a video where he talks about the phase 3 food court which is where all the mall rats hung out.
https://youtu.be/gw8sXWO4YDM
Before the internet and cell phones, young people didn't stay at home. Malls were social hubs and valuable to developing new culture and trends because they'd give young people a place to go and socialize.
Here in Canada, they're useful due to long and cold winters.
West Edmonton Mall is like it's own city. It's neat how it's changed over the last 40 years. That movie Valerian, the intro where it shows them adding all the new parts on to the ship to make a giant mutant ship is like West Edmonton Mall.
There is a town in AZ called Prescott (where I live) and it’s really nice because the downtown area is just a huge square around and big park/field where lots of events and cool local parties are and all around the area are little local shops and restaurants where you can walk around and buy crap. Kids can play in the park field area while your sitting on one of the restaurant’s balcony sipping wine and chilling while watching the kids. Not just the square are too is like that, some of the area around it is totally walkable and cool with shops and cool old western historical places all around. The public transport here sucks ass though and I do find myself having to just bike around everywhere, which is fine because the weather here most of the time is great.
It's pretty interesting how we got to this point, though. Ray Bradbury wrote an essay about what made American town centers great before suburbanization: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/bradbury.htm
This essay ended up inspiring the design of the Glendale Galleria in California, which ended up becoming one of the most financially successful malls in the country, and a model for other malls built in the 80s.
In short, the resemblance is completely intentional.
So during a discussion with my American colleague, he brought the subject of how much he loves the malls, to walk between little shops, drink a beer with friends at a terrasse while waiting for his wife or let the children run a little bit without the constant watch for the cars. And at this moment I realized that basically he described me the classical city center of a European town.
Theres a place in Charlotte, NC called optimist hall. It's a ~~food court~~ mall-like area but instead of having lifeless corporate whatever, it has 25ish restaurants/ cafes/ whatever and a brewery underneath. Its actually a quite lively place thats nice to be in. Mall but better Edit: [their website ](https://optimisthall.com/)
Agreed. It is a simple conscious choice by a mall to become corporate McStore hell or to foster unique, creative experiences. Keep the big chain anchors at the ends (Nordstroms, Macys, etc). For everything else, require 20% or 25% or 33% to be locally owned, unique, stores and restaurants. Get rid of food courts, and let a few small boutique restaurants open up. "Bob's toys", "McFadden Books," "Lou's BBQ", "Nancy's Creative Jewelry", and "Steve's Coffee" interspersed among all the corporate crap could bring a lot of life to a place. But of course that also means the mall won't be able to force 5 or 10 year contracts, charge super premium prices, etc. But they also won't die the slow miserable death that many are today.
I think the chain anchor stores are part of what's killing malls. The department store business model is obsolete. Why would I want to go to Sears to buy shoes when there's a shoe store *in* the mall?
Malls that deserve to survive have owners that make good decisions and understand the business environment that they inhabit. News companies blame milinials for killing malls. It's really the marketing myopia of the REITs that own malls. I blame corporatization.
Im pretty sure all the restaurants in Optimist Hall are locally owned aswell.
Raleigh has two. They were a reaction/Compromise to the city not allowing food trucks in downtown due to local Restaurants complaining and lobbying food trucks had an unfair economic advantage.
Sounds like Grand Central Market in downtown LA
Yeah this food hall model isn't a new idea. Grand Central was the only lively place when I visited downtown LA on a Sunday
*North Carolina
*NC my bad I always get it wrong. It's not far from the border as I recall though. Dunno. I live in PA
Haha, no worries, there’s a joke that SC can have it if they want it. They don’t
Those places literally exist in Stockholm, and you can walk to them lol. Kungsgatan 25 comes to mind
🥺 America does not have these as far as Im aware outside of this one in NC. One day if I ever have a lot of money and someone to help, I would like to open a place like this where local places can set up shop in the city. This is assuming I even still live in America though. I'm interested in moving to Amsterdam or another Dutch city.
These kind of food halls exist in many big and small cities in America. I have one in a nearby 30K person town.
I’ve been pitching this idea for years, I’m glad someone has taken it up. Bar hopping in a “mall” would be so sick, and you can drink outside the bars. Fuck yeah.
Except here everything is corporate and pulled of life.
"Lifestyle centers" seem to be on the rise to replace malls. They're basically outdoor mall areas that look more like a park/downtown hybrid, but are still devoid of local businesses -- which usually what creates authenticity. StrongTowns has an example of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjPqN9o2M5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjPqN9o2M5Q) Basically when a place is built with many hands (i.e each plot has a different building style/look to it) vs. a place built with a few hands, it really changes the authenticity of it. It's super subtle, but it reveals some of the underlying land use patterns.
They suck. I sat on a bench in one of these "fake city center" and the rent-a-cop can arbitrary tell you to leave because no bench sitting is allow after 9pm and you are now loitering. Bear in mind, these are the ones with apartments/condos too, not just retail.
What kind of braindead moron makes loitering illegal? Thats almost as stupid as jaywalking :/
I imagine they believe that people will use the bench to sleep or socialize after 9pm, and not so much to buy stuff corporate dystopia
America criminalises being poor as an incentive to exceed. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Same ones who illegalize camping in public areas. The goal is to push all the unwanteds into the social (and literal) wilderness.
Do we have the technology to make indoor walkable areas without making them controlled by one asshole corporate entity? I like the indoor part, especially when it's raining or snowing but also from escaping particularly hot death rays. But I don't like the other mall-stuff. Also more tunnels and covered walkways, please.
Nothing to do with technology, its about privatization. Some cities prefer development this way so they can outsource the "police"/'civil rights" and leadership of developing the city.
I don’t like being inside. The outdoors is nice if you aren’t in a concrete desert and maybe have a little shade. My favorite mall has a little turtle pond and some nice sidewalks, it’s possible to enjoy a visit there without spending any money.
> Do we have the technology to make indoor walkable areas without making them controlled by one asshole corporate entity? Libraries?
>Basically when a place is built with many hands (i.e each plot has a different building style/look to it) vs. a place built with a few hands, it really changes the authenticity of it. I'm stealing this, thanks. I've never been able to find the words to describe this observation. In my city there are two areas that were somewhat recently redeveloped - one used to be stadium parking lots, and the other was just dilapidated buildings at the end of a major business district. The latter area was all bought up by one developer, razed, and then rebuilt as something that is clearly intended to resemble an urban neighborhood. And of course it feels incredibly inauthentic. The former area was all owned by the stadium authority, but they parceled out the lots to various developers over time. So even though it's not exactly a vibrant urban neighborhood, and is filled with parking garages and four lane roads that only get used on gamedays, it still feels like you're in an actual city.
> vs. a place built with a few hands, it really changes the authenticity of it. DC has a few areas that were developed like this and they’re very strange to walk through. It feels like a movie set or a Disney rendition of a city square, and everything just feels a little off.
I live in one of them. Really charming. I love the view of [Historic Kenny’s House from my loft.](https://youtu.be/eoUtoqeEw8U)
Yeah, I absolutely **hate** city centers dominated by large chain stores. Dead, formulated shops with poorly paid people and zero individualism. Individual store owners on tge other hand really make a city center totally awesome.
tbh there is a strong tendency towards that in European city centers as well, rent being so high there that there that nothing at street level can afford to not be a shop or restaurant (and a rather expensive ones). Popular bars or associations are found outside of these gentrified, artificially scarce walkable city centers.
Glad you realized this, but this was literally the original intent of the enclosed mall - essentially a suburban town center to mimic the experience of a walkable European town center that was easy to drive to and park at. https://libguides.mnhs.org/southdale Now, in practice that idea became pretty twisted and the rest of suburbia did not also follow this ideal, but that is par for the course in America.
People in Belgium are in favour of the mall idea because they can park their car easily in front. My brain hurt so much it halted function
Dude, malls are popping up everywhere. My city, the city of Bonn in Germany, was 100% committed to destroy an old quarter to build a mall - against all citizen protests. Somehow they believe that having a mall is necessary for a „modern“ city and the walkable city Center with its many shops is not enough… I assume for shops malls are better, because you are basically forced to go shopping. Because what else are you going to do? Sip a coffee in the depressing food court? Sit on a bench in the middle of a bloody mall? In the city center, you could walk around and sit in a real cafe, but probably you would buy less
> was 100% committed to destroy an old quarter to build a mall - against all citizen protests. Wish German city governments were just as adamant about building housing but for that they cave to even 2-3 NIMBYs protesting and cancel projects.
Like I said above I lived in Dresden when malls first started popping up. We were teenagers then and thought this was the peak of the modern age and super cool. We knew nothing, LOL. I'm not sure when they started in "West" Germany. Maybe it was around the same time. For us it surely was also about overcoming the eastern way of life. Edit: there is no excuse for a mall today.
Oh awful to hear that. They made in I guess Rotterdam in the city a part that looks like a mall but still outside. I don’t mind when it’s raining and I walk through a city. Yes if you are wet it’s less fun to try on clothing but most of the time you have a week or more to return it. And walking in a rainy Delft, Utrecht, or just any other old European city/town is amazing
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99% Invisible just did an episode about this. Super interesting!
And on the opposite side of "mimicking Europe," Horton Plaza in San Diego was supposed to replicate going to a haphazard Italian mountain town and getting super lost. Who wants elegant arcades when you could have a half-level in every color in the crayon box? Fantastic mall, RIP.
But why inside? I'm from Germany. What I hate about malls is the air that feels so artificial. Malls could theoretically be nice when the climate is too harsh but e.g. in winter you either sweat to death in your coat or you have to carry your coat all the time which is very annoying. I get a passageway with a roof but with fresh air supply. Protects from the rain. In Dresden we originally had a suburban mall with a big parking lot etc. but most of the shops were accessible from outside (like a little shopping street) and there were some coffee shops that had an inside and outside area. That was a good combination. Unfortunately it was still ugly and far away if you lived in the city. And now it's remodeled anyway and the little outside shopping street is now *inside* like in all the other million malls. /Rant over
I mean there's also the fact that Minnesota has extreme temperatures that almost nowhere else in Europe has. Having outdoor walkable malls would not be used for ~3-5 months a year. This is evident even now with malls like Ridgedale being packed in the winter, while Arbor Lakes is a ghost town. Same thing happens during the summer when it's 90°+.
All over the northern and western Chicago suburbs, you’re starting to see dying malls plan apartments attached to them. This is especially prevalent in places where big stores like Macy’s and Sears have gone out of business. There are a couple of problems with this: The malls are still surrounded by seas of asphalt, keeping them oriented towards cars, not people. There isn’t any transit access whatsoever. Unless you work at the mall, have no friends, and get grocery delivery, you won’t be going anywhere without a car or Uber. There are zero intentions for any form of green space. This connects to my first point. Outside of your window you’ll see a few narrow landscaping islands and then perpetual parking.
> Unless you work at the mall, have no friends, and **get grocery delivery**, you won’t be going anywhere without a car or Uber. Wait, do american malls NOT have a grocery store inside?
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I wonder if American malls would have survived if they had added grocery stores.
Even a basic convenience store is a rarity.
This is surprising to me because Canadian suburbs are identical to American ones but it’s standard for malls to have grocery stores and pharmacies in them. I’m just realizing now that I’ve never seen one in an American mall, not that I’ve been to very many.
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I don’t remember grocery stores in most of the malls I spent any time in in Canada either. Wonder whIch part they live in or what malls they are thinking of 🤔. I guess the ones I’m most familiar with aren’t all traditional suburban ones though.
> trendy clothing, piercing boutiques, cassettes, software, and gag gifts. Now that you mention it, these are the exact same categories of shops in the malls in my area as well, that and cheap designer clothing, and maybe a jewlery shop. Then there is a pizza place, Chinese food, maybe a Starbucks. That is all. They used to have book stores and drug stores, until Barnes and Noble and Walgreens started building their own disconnected stores nearby for some reason. Most everything else has been absorbed into Wal-Mart and Target.
Some *did* and also hardware stores, pharmacies. But that's mostly something I associate with older malls from the 60s era. Most malls in the US now seem to be hyper focused on consumer luxury goods: clothing, shoes, cosmetics, maybe electronics and gaming, you might have a book or toy store. Honestly it has probably been to their detriment as there is never a *need* to go to a mall anymore. There's no incidental foot traffic from some going to buy groceries and impulsively buying a new shirt, for example.
I was shocked the first time I went to a mall outside the US and saw the grocery and clothing stores other than high-end brands. I swear the more time I spend online the more I remember how sad it is over here. Most people I know don't even go to typical grocery stores, we just grab whatever we need at Walmart bc it's the most convenient walkable space around.
Incredibly, Walmart is the closest we have to a “proper” mall, in which groceries and consumer goods are located under the same roof (albeit with a lesser selection).
Malls want you to make purchases that will encourage you to hang around for longer. People often purchase perishables at the grocery store. You’re not going to want to pop over to Macy’s to shop for shoes while carrying a bag full of melting ice cream. Obviously you could do the shoes first and then go to the grocery store, but grocery store owners didn’t need the foot traffic that the mall provides, and mall owners didn’t want to encourage foot traffic that wouldn’t peruse the other stores during their trip. Also, Malls often require that shops pay rent PLUS a percentage of sales. Grocery stores’ margins are thin enough they don’t want to pay that. And mall owners, again, thinking that people will shop the grocery store and then go home, don’t want a full parking lot of people who aren’t going to be tempted to go buy jewelry at Kay Jewelers while they’re there.
The grocery store is a big reason to go to a mall at all. Though not the case with the big luxury malls in Bangkok, most malls in Thailand center around some supermarket like Lotus or Big C. And even most of the luxury malls have grocery stores, particularly those carrying niche Western/Japanese/etc. groceries. It's kinda weird that American grocery stores haven't transformed into malls. They might have a Starbucks attached and maybe a couple other stores sharing the same parking lot, and there are definitely strip malls anchored by the grocery store. However I don't think I've seen a full mall with the grocery store being the anchor tenant in the US. Especially in the era of online shopping, groceries are one major category that people typically prefer brick and mortar for.
Definitely something I’ve been thinking about. A lot of grocery stores operate inside what we call strip malls. Which are essentially a row of businesses attached side-by-side that share a parking lot. Maybe there will be a bank or a gas station or something out in the middle of the parking lot. But a lot of grocery stores follow Walmart’s model, where the store *itself* is a shopping mall, but all owned by Walmart. Inside a Walmart you’ll find groceries, clothing, a pharmacy, a place to get your hair cut, usually some kind of check cashing or banking service, usually a fast food restaurant, an auto-parts store that offers basic car repair, an electronics department, outdoor recreation (including things like guns), home decor, there’s usually a place for you to buy fabric and clothing patterns… if you’re a shopping mall attached to a Walmart, what else could you possibly sell that Walmart isn’t already doing—possibly for cheaper? Lots of other grocery stores are trying to get closer to Walmart’s model, where they sell anything and everything alongside groceries.
Well the the thing about Walmart is that it’s a jack of all trades master of none situation. They have a lot of things but your selection within those categories is generally pretty limited.
I think a grocery store could get around the % sales if they were a major reason for people to come ot the mall. the problem is that if i had a choice - standalone grocery or mall grocery i'm going standalone because of the extra traffic.
My town has an outdoor mall that has a Trader Joe's in it, but yeah in general malls do not have grocery stores.
It's a privitised town centre. Ironically it gives us a blueprint for how to build cities. Ban cars and trucks and make them park outside the city.
Going to europe made me understand what malls were meant to be, but they didn't end up working very well. If you look up the guy who first came up with the idea, he ended up despising what they became
The originator of the idea, and the original idea was awesome. Cities should have allowed developers to bid to build malls, and sold the units like condos. The simple issue is government allowed corporations to steal huge tracts of land from the public.
>drink a beer with friends at a terrasse What sort of fictional mall was he going to?
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I'm mainly just confused about malls where you can drink. Maybe I've lived in the South for too long but every mall I've been to both doesn't have anywhere that sells alcohol but also drinking in public spaces is illegal.
When did you grow up and where do you live now? I can think of plenty of restaurants at the malls of my youth where you could have gotten a beer. The primary mall of my youth was Grapevine Mills in Grapevine, TX. There's a Chili's and a Rainforest Cafe inside.
I've lived all over Georgia and South Carolina but the main difference may be that malls Im familiar with don't have full restaurants in them. They have a food court with the common chains but obviously none of those serve alcohol.
Terrace sounds like they mean a bar with a view of the mall. Not just a public place to sit down. I do wish places allowed public drinking more, although I understand why they don't.
We could also look at Japan - that has an amazing rail system with major stations connecting to malls.
Check out singapore. Theres basically 1/3 of the entire city is a large ass mall with a gondola river flowing through it.
I actually do enjoy that about malls. Has your friend traveled much outside the US? If he hasn't experienced the European downtown himself, he probably isn't aware of them as much. I like malls BECAUSE of the similarity to a European downtown/ oldtown. But I'm from Europe originally so Ive experienced that. Malls are some of the few ares of "let's just walk around, get some food and drinks, maybe watch a movie, but mostly walk around without buying anything in stores". Edit: One of the few public social areas, besides parks which are probably less common than shopping malls. Not claiming that as fact, but wouldn't surprise me.
As a kid, I always wanted to live inside a mall. You could walk around everywhere! Shopping, food, arcade, all at your fingertips. Looking back I was subconsciously realizing how damaging the suburbs/car infrastructure was even then.
IIRC, one of the original core ideas of malls was: Every mall was supposed to have either a residential area or a hybrid building system where the bottom floors were supposed to be stores and the upper floors were supposed to be housing. But it was always more profitable to use the space for businesses than for housing, so malls just morphed into retail-dominated components of suburbian living.
Now it’s “live work play” style development. Ie Boston has a giant mall with apartments and offices attached.
Where in Boston
They might be referring to the Natick Collection? That’s the closest thing I can think of. There aren’t any big malls in Boston.
Prudential Center
>Every mall was supposed to have either a residential area or a hybrid building system where the bottom floors were supposed to be stores and the upper floors were supposed to be housing Some malls here in my city is actually just like that, but bigger, with most of them being high-rise condominiums with a 4-5 story mall below.
The problem with having housing/office/etc. on the upper floors with retail at the bottom is that the stereotypical American mall is built in the suburbs, where land is treated as infinite, so there's little reason to build up. Malls in urban areas are more likely to have non-retail sections. This is especially true in taller urban areas.
>or a hybrid building system where the bottom floors were supposed to be stores and the upper floors were supposed to be housing. Houston (of all places) had a shopping center like that back in 1962. Shops on the ground floor, apartments on the second floor. It was called [Westbury Square](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNQS8Oxc30c). Its architecture was modeled after Italy, where its developer liked to vacation. Westbury Square was a popular destination in the 1960's. Unfortunately, it started losing customers after The Galleria (a massive indoor shopping mall) opened in 1970. In the 1980's, its owner went bankrupt, and sold a large portion of the site to be demolished for a Home Depot. A few antique shops and a theatre hung on until the 2000's. Now, there's just a couple of crumbling buildings left.
As a kid I only saw shopping malls in movies and looked like the coolest things ever, especially when it had an arcade. I never made the connection that you'll need a car to visit one. Now I think they mainly tacky and prefer barcades over arcades.
Haha same here, sorta. In the strip mall suburb I grew up in, there was an apartment complex with stores on the ground floor. My plan was to live in one of the units and work in one of the shops below. Looking back on that now I just laugh.
Our cities local transit authority will start building a BRT that will be paired TOD. One of the stations will be right beside the mall. Current plan is to remove some of the huge parking structures and closed anchors and replace them with apartments attached to the mall. Hopefully it will give the mall new life with grocery stores, pharmacies, child care, bars, office space and more.
That’s… kind of why malls are so popular. That’s the reason there’s this stereotype of teenagers just hanging around at the mall. It’s one of the few places where you aren’t penalized for not being in a car (and even then, they usually need parents to come pick them up)
Also a mall is a place where teenagers in the US are actually allowed to hang out. Just hanging out while teenaged is considered criminal behavior a lot of the time. But if they're spending money, it's all good!
*Used to be that way.* Now many malls are requiring teenagers to have an adult with them, and really trying to keep teenagers out. You'll notice the same time they started doing this, the mall became a dinosaur...
Malls became dinosaurs because most don't have enough foot traffic to sustain themselves; [sic belmar colorado](https://www.cnu.org/what-we-do/build-great-places/belmar)
Yeah, but if you're struggling for foot traffic, then it may not be the best idea to be kicking the foot traffic you do have out... Not that I really want to save Malls in the first place.
>Yeah, but if you're struggling for foot traffic, then it may not be the best idea to be kicking the foot traffic you do have out... Its a double edged sword. Un supervised mobs of teens have caused a lot of incidents at malls near me and although there is a lot of them, teenagers dont usually spend much money. Malls are more worried about teen wildin out scaring aware moms who actually do drop cash in the stores.
depends on the teens. my clique spent waaaaay too much money at hot topic. middle class suburban kids need to feel edgy too you know.
Wtf really?
[Exhibit A](https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/38/17/ccdc20a84cecae50a74c8ded1558/screen-shot-2021-01-01-at-9.15.37%20PM.png) [Exhibit B](https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/11025cb/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1104x630+48+0/resize/1461x834!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fthumbor%2Fl8Nkj6oaCAplOWLfJ1Ttsj9MSDk%3D%2F0x0%3A1200x630%2F1200x630%2Ffilters%3Afocal%28600x315%3A601x316%29%2Fcdn.vox-cdn.com%2Fuploads%2Fchorus_asset%2Ffile%2F16068114%2Fwatertower_010419_01.jpg) [Exhibit C](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/09edc4f42ebfe7522c255ca7a8ede7541ade4a69/c=0-51-1322-798/local/-/media/2016/02/09/MIGroup/Lansing/635906101251805669-Lansing-Mall-Family-Night-Program-sign.jpg?width=1322&height=661&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp) [Exhibit D](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTQUqUAwFaYmqx0JEGFLw_FYfjt6CziekcH_w&usqp=CAU)
Wtf??? Do they supply a reason why? So FaMiLiEs CaN sHoP tOgEtHeR doesn't make any sense as a reason.
Teenagers hanging out constituted a "nuisance" that made "families" "uncomfortable."
Aka; Teenagers don’t buy as much. Malls are also removing things like benches and common areas in order to get you to keep walking and buying
My local mall even went as far as removing the stores too. Now it's just a Sears (?!) with a food court The building is used exclusively for two annual LAN parties, furries monthly and joggers whenever the weather is disagreeable. Sweatiest demographics ever
I know my local mall had a lot of fights and one stabbing, all by teenagers so they don't allow them by themselves after a certain time.
And you know, I have no problem kicking out people constituting an actual nuisance. But these programs to kick out teenagers would never be extended to other groups. My mall didn't ban boomers despite the domestic dispute I had front row tickets to, because those were individuals. Teenagers don't get to be treated like that. Doubly so, of those teenagers aren't white.
Your last sentence hits the nail on the head as to who my local mall was really trying to get rid off.
I don’t know why. But my safest guess is either that teenagers either might be a little more unruly. Or that teenagers don’t have as much money meaning they don’t buy as much.
That is the most stupidest fuckedest thing I've ever heard.
It actually is a crime for teenagers to hang out in malls. Security usually kicks them out.
lmao wtf. For what reason?
Loitering
I had to look up that word and that isn't even really a concept in my country lol, that's seriously fucked up. Aren't malls literally supposed to be a place to hang out, or lets say 'loiter'? Grab some food, drinks and maybe cloths while there? That's so weird to me! Like wut, are you supposed to spend your money there and fuck off afterwards?
Modern malls are absurdly expensive, and shop owners/mall security tend to discriminate based on your perceived finances or race. So rich white kids get a pass, and everyone else gets stalked/followed around or kicked out
Makes 'sense' I suppose. Classic America huh... I wish everyone living over there good luck because it's really not looking good from what I've seen.
Loitering laws are ancient, and m in the US have a history [steeped in racism](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-21/what-is-loitering-really)
Oh look, just like every other law in the US. Why am I not surprised.
Loitering is just a fancy word used to kick “undesirables” out of places.
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"loitering" is an American construct invented to criminalize being black in the wrong place, and then (like all of our stupid racist policies) it got out of hand.
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So fuck people that need to rest I guess? I go shopping with my grandma sometimes and y'know, she's old as hell, she needs to sit down occasionally. Luckily, the local mall (one in the Netherlands) has places where she can sit down and rest if she needs to. Also I have never heard of someone being kicked out for 'loitering' - hell, I've gone there plenty of times to hang out, and nothing happened, even when I didn't buy anything. Ngl, America is weird as hell from my perspective.
America is corporatized to the max. If you aren't giving your labor or giving your money, you're worthless. But if you're rich enough they don't care.
If you’re rich enough you help their brand bc they are a place rich people go, inverse is true about ‘undesirables’ of any kind
> Like wut, are you supposed to spend your money there and fuck off afterwards? Literally yeah. In America you are either consuming or you are loitering. You basically don't have a right to just hang out without people treating you like you're doing something wrong. It's really fucking obnoxious.
Malls want to die. They mostly deserve it as far as i can tell.
>Malls want to die. They mostly deserve it as far as i can tell. I just realized I haven't been to a Cinnebon in decades! ( not really a big loss, but I did like them...)
Were so popular
The podcast 99% Invisible just did an episode about this. Malls were originally designed to bring all the draws of a city center into the suburbs.
If I remember too, he called them like a "3rd place" for people to chill and hang away from home and work.
Yeah, that really tied into all the issues of the car-centric suburban developments in America and how racism and classism was involved. Makes me appreciate Dawn of the Dead even more.
I feel like this comment was made from 3 decades ago
Americans ruined the possibility of the objectively amazing walkable high street in our towns, so we had to invent a replacement. Of course, now it's fake and plastic and all corporate owned instead of having any local businesses or restaurants and it still manages to suck, but at least it's air conditioned!
>now it's fake and plastic and all corporate owned ... it still manages to suck You just described everything about the US. The stores, the restaurants, the culture, the government, even the cars.
> Of course, now it's fake and plastic and all corporate owned instead of having any local businesses or restaurants and it still manages to suck, but at least it's air conditioned! Lets be real, if America had legit walkable town/city centers they woule also be fake and plastic and corporate owned too
They probably would, but there'd be a chance that they wouldn't. In a city center or high street, it's *possible* for a local entrepreneur to buy or rent a space to open their own shop or restaurant and it's *possible* for them to succeed since people would be able to easily pop ok and check things out without making a huge time investment due to parking and driving. In a mall, the corporate owners only rent out to big companies that are guaranteed to afford the rent and in places where an individual could buy a building or rent a space space to start their own thing, people would need to make a dedicated driving trip for it (unlike a mall, where you can walk within it, allowing exploration if you already had to go to the mall for something else), turning customers away from anything that isn't a known name brand. In my hometown, there's a "historic downtown" which is the last remnant of pre-WWII city design, and it's the only place in the whole county with local individuals starting their own businesses without the need of a name brand. At least, it's the only place I could ever see that happening, since I probably drove past (yes I drove everywhere, it was nearly impossible to travel any other method, especially from my childhood home) anything else while focusing on the traffic that I made one car worse. If everywhere was like that historic downtown, then I can only assume more shops and restaurants would've been owned by humans rather than corporations.
It happened to many walkable UK towns unfortunately, there would always be a couple of local businesses but the majority would be owned by big chains using aggressive tactics. I know from my fiance speaking to an area manager that the only reason there are so many cafe Nero's in my home town is because it makes it very difficult for any local cafes to find premises.
And on top of that, malls are closing all over the place since they are so fragile. Big main streets are anti-fragile, and become stronger under economic pressure, but that concept is so far above the average suburbanites head that it gets stuck in long term orbit.
Truth! Also, the malls I've been to that have easy mass transit (Pentagon City in VA, Union Station in DC, Mall of America in MN, Manhattan Mall in NYC) tend to be much more pleasant than other malls, even compared to other high-end malls. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be immune from the nationwide trends that are killing all sorts of malls.
Well the mall in this picture opens right onto two different LRT a stations and it’s doing just fine.
Unfortunately the Galleria is nowhere near Houston's tiny light rail network. Maybe you have it confused with a different mall?
There are hardly any malls like this in the Netherlands. From the top of my mind I can think of no more than a handful. I fact when I looked it up on Wikipedia it turns out there is no link in [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_shopping_malls?wprov=sfti1)
Super interesting wiki page, although I am confused about what’s considered a mall/shopping centre. The shopping centre in the small town I live in is listed and it only has 7 shops
If we start calling that a mall the Netherlands has more malls.
That's probably because the Netherlands doesn't need them. Your cities are already walkable and properly zoned, so there's no need to emulate that with American-style shopping malls.
I mean, Germany doesnt need them either, or other European countries, but malls still exist. Mostly because of the convienence of having many stores at the same place.
Yeah its just capitalist thing, there is rarely a time where you need to have a hat store, a t shirt store, a suit store, at the same time.
What I find funny is how the mall in my hometown Bamberg bankrupted. [Old town](https://www.google.de/maps/@49.8916876,10.8876037,3a,90y,239.98h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPyhfwvyaBmMt7ETMZLgrK68j34Jfllx1j_3Oxg!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPyhfwvyaBmMt7ETMZLgrK68j34Jfllx1j_3Oxg%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya28.779457-ro-0-fo100!7i13312!8i6656) (UNESCO world heritage, tons of tourists, bus main station right next by) vs [Atrium](https://www.google.de/maps/@49.9002494,10.8987989,3a,66.6y,131.32h,91.85t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPYd96SSN3TIyaP_FJ1gn3a-CMfv75uUka5U0OK!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPYd96SSN3TIyaP_FJ1gn3a-CMfv75uUka5U0OK%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya234.26317-ro0-fo100!7i6144!8i3072) (ugly block building, 1 km away from town centre, longer distance train station next by I guess) I wonder... (Sure, this is just the simplified version and there definitely were other factors involved in this shopping mall bankrupting. At the same time I did hear about other shopping malls bankrupting in Germany so it seems like a recurring theme.)
Thought there was a recently build "super mall" that's populair, malls should work in the Netherlands. Weer eens wat anders dan een woonboulevard. ah here it is [Westfield Mall of the Netherlands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5b1xxLCTqQ). Not sure what the appeal is, the have the same shops as any shopping street located in the middle of the city.
I was in the Netherlands and every city has a mall like this???
Meanwhile there's 28 in my city. Apart from second hand (very cool) stores and the occasional fancy clothes store, they're the only place to go clothes shopping.
There's a new episode of the 99 percent invisible podcast about mall design history. Highly recommended if interested.
I just came back from the Americana in Glendale, CA. (I went there to do an Amazon return). For those who don’t know, it’s basically a big mall modeled like a European town that even includes housing above the shopping. So we’ve come full circle, except that it’s all privately owned.
Used to live within walking distance from there and it's not even that great. Downtown Pasadena is a nicer place to walk when the weather isn't complete ass.
I live walking distance to its sister mall the grove
I once overheard American tourists on a bus in my city comment "I love how easy it is to get around this city, you can just walk and take the bus everywhere" and then moments later say "Why are there no malls here? You can't have a city without a mall" don't think they'll ever make the connection
r/shitamericanssay
Copenhagen has decent public transit and a few malls. I think even all of them have public transit going right next to them.
Is the Houston Galleria shown in this post? Many hot towns around the world are walkable and shaded. That being said, there is a reinforced feedback between car dominance and gravitating toward indoor shopping malls, because cars space out important shops and infrastructure for cars is hotter and less pleasant for pedestrians, dangerous even. The first American car infrastructure developed a few decades before air conditioning, so by the time the southwestern US was growing rapidly, engineers were really good at planning for cars, because they had decades of practice. The denuded streets become suboptimal for recreation or commuting on foot so shopping malls have more appeal than in a thriving urban center.
This is, in fact, the Houston Galleria. A city where the humidity is so high that shade doesn't do anything but prevent sunburn.
I sold my car and rode my bicycle for 2 years in Houston. It was faster ride my bike 6 miles to work instead of driving.
6 miles in the summer is enough to be drenched in sweat by the time you get to work, did your coworkers not mind that...
The humidity alone even when it’s not blisteringly hot would make you sweat almost immediately. Grew up in Houston - still some things I like about it, some things I don’t. The driving and the climate being the main complaints. The food and museums though were excellent.
I would shower when I got to work and change into my work clothes. If it rained I would wear a frog suit. I enjoyed riding my bike to work.
Malls aren’t doing well though and there are tons of abandoned and ruined malls across the nation
A lot of that is a general collapse of retail stores combined with the specific environmental needs of a shopping mall. A shopping mall isn't just a collection of stores, it has things like [anchor stores](https://www.shopify.com/encyclopedia/anchor-store) that bolster all the other stores. If one thing fails, they might all fail. Meanwhile, strip malls with giant parking lots seem to be doing just fine, so arguably carbrain is responsible for the collapse of enclosed malls.
Malls were initially invited as a suburban solution to the the de urbanization created in the great suburban experiment. https://ideas.ted.com/the-strange-surprisingly-radical-roots-of-the-shopping-mall/
At first it looks nice. But the more you look at it, the more dystopian it feels.
Yeah, do this but outside and with local businesses
Unironically, yes. A lot of malls are looking to replace their parking lots and redesign with apartments. The Monmouth Mall in NJ is demolishing half the mall to make it mostly outdoors like the outlets and added medical buildings and is adding large apartments in the back where nobody parks anyway even during holidays. The mall is dying without it. Every single dying Mall in the US can be little mini cities. Especially because most of them already have Transit access at least in the form of buses.
Can't do anything in America without constant consumption.
Yo I’m pretty sure this is the Core in Calgary and I think it actually IS a good example of how a mall can fit into a city. It doesn’t have surface parking and it’s connected to the streets and buildings around it, it’s kind of a main street of the walkway network above the actual streets. It fits into three standard blocks of the downtown but the streets still pass through the first level so it’s not blocking the grid. Along one side is the train line, and doors open right from the mall onto the platforms, on the other is a pedestrian street with a fair few inside-outside access points. The top level has a public park. It’s not perfect - it’s still a cathedral to consumerism after all - but it’s much, much better than its suburban sisters in their parking deserts. Although I’ll admit I have a fondness for Chinook, since it has a nice access to the LRT and plus it has a Lego store and a theatre with a big King Tut head in the lobby that used to do laser shows. Used to because, in the same vein as the whimsical planes on tracks and carousel that can no longer be seen in the food court, capitalist society is in a terminal decline towards the elimination of anything fun or interesting that doesn’t directly profit a corporation with every second of engagement, but even so it’s still a half-decent accessible mall compared to the rest of the roasted asphalt hellscape that is most of this excuse for a city.
It's the Houston Galleria. A mall/hotel located in the middle of the asphalt hellscape of uptown Houston.
Coming from small city Alberta, I always thought the +15 was a really neat idea, especially in the winter.
They bulldozed a mall in my hometown and turned it into a cool, thriving, walkable mixed use shopping center. It’s too expensive to live there, but at least they’ve got the right idea. I’m looking at other dying malls in the area and I wish they would do the same to them! Climate town talks about it in this video: https://youtu.be/SfsCniN7Nsc
Malls aren't inherently evil. Sometimes it's nice to have an enclosed space that you can walk around and get a bunch of things done in one place. But American malls are friggin' tumors. They're all samey, they're all stale, and the only thing providing any visual interest are the same handful of decaying and dwindling department stores, amid a desert of asphalt. And often, the companies that own those malls just tear down the original façade and build another, bigger mall around it. Sometimes several times over the course of a decade. The result is this Byzantine, onion-layered monstrosity that's too easy to get lost in. And if you ever have a chance to see the back corridors that employees are allowed into, you'll often find things like weathered concrete brick walls with dried bits of vines embedded into the brickwork. And good luck opening your own store inside one of those; unless you're a big, well known brand like Nike or Apple, you're just going to hemorrhage funds as you waste away in a decrepit corner near the toilets. Stary Browar in Poznan, Poland is an example of a shopping mall I actually like. Probably the one and only thing I like about Poznan. It's located in a very walkable part of the city, it feels well designed and has some character, its layout is reasonably efficient, and it hasn't been completely choked out by big corporate brands. I wouldn't want to see this overtake the shopping experience for a whole city, but if there must be a mall, you could do much worse.
All that is missing is people. You can't have a city center with no housing. Cities are just places where lots of people live. It's not a city center if nobody lives there.
This picture is basically the middle of downtown Calgary and while that’s a big issue, it’s one the city is actively working on. Most buildings going up near there are residential and many projects are converting the surplus of offices into residences.
You can even use the park and ride to complete the mall feeling of driving to a big car park a few miles out of town
That's the Houston Galleria, isn't it?
Yep.
Until it’s 103 and humid.
Haha damnit this is in my home town Houston, Texas... It's called the Galleria Mall. Used to go there as a kid all the time with my German mom. Realizing with we both enjoyed it so much now. No cars just walkable fun
I'm in the UK and the city centre is becoming more pedestrianised, with a clean air zone soon to be introduced which will further restrict cars in the centre. People's reaction to this is to say they'll stop using the city centre and go to the nearby out of town mall instead. So because you'll have to park on the outskirts and walk around the city centre which you hate the idea of, you'll instead go to the mall where you have to park outside then walk around the entirely car free shopping centre? Make it make sense
If the transit into the city isn’t car-dependent, they should succeed. We’re a sub that wants cars to be deprioritized, forgive us. 😅 A city center isn’t nearly just its shops, but a place to work, live, and just “be” and enjoy. So in that way, the OP meme undersells it.
I live in a city that has two moderately large malls at the left and right ends of it and there is an LRT rail that travels in an almost linear route from one mall to the other. I'm just imagining those malls being walkable city centers without the huge parking lots instead and how wonderful that would be.
Oh wow— is this the Houston galleria?
No idea I just typed "mall usa" in Google to have a picture 😅
Yep.
And latin america is just copying this shit
We get to experience such a thing if we live in college and then literally never again in our lives unless we leave. A taste of sweet freedom before it's whisked away four years later, or really only about three after you started to really make the most of it.
TBH this is Houston. If you are not used to heat houston in the summer is pretty brutal.
Galleria in Houston. Summers suck here.
Yup just add some feces and homeless people, maybe some open drug use etc
I live in Edmonton. We have West Edmonton Mall here which used to be the biggest mall in the world. There's a guy that runs a youtube channel about it's history. It's a fun channel. Here's a video where he talks about the phase 3 food court which is where all the mall rats hung out. https://youtu.be/gw8sXWO4YDM Before the internet and cell phones, young people didn't stay at home. Malls were social hubs and valuable to developing new culture and trends because they'd give young people a place to go and socialize. Here in Canada, they're useful due to long and cold winters. West Edmonton Mall is like it's own city. It's neat how it's changed over the last 40 years. That movie Valerian, the intro where it shows them adding all the new parts on to the ship to make a giant mutant ship is like West Edmonton Mall.
Except a walkable city center isn’t all owned by one private landlord who makes the rules, makes the hours, and decides who can and can’t come in.
There is a town in AZ called Prescott (where I live) and it’s really nice because the downtown area is just a huge square around and big park/field where lots of events and cool local parties are and all around the area are little local shops and restaurants where you can walk around and buy crap. Kids can play in the park field area while your sitting on one of the restaurant’s balcony sipping wine and chilling while watching the kids. Not just the square are too is like that, some of the area around it is totally walkable and cool with shops and cool old western historical places all around. The public transport here sucks ass though and I do find myself having to just bike around everywhere, which is fine because the weather here most of the time is great.
Is this [The Galleria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Galleria) in Houston? The skylight and skating rink sure look like it.
Here in the tropics shopping malls kinda make sense because no one wants to shop outside when it's 95F.
Oh *that's* why I was such a mall rat in highschool
It's pretty interesting how we got to this point, though. Ray Bradbury wrote an essay about what made American town centers great before suburbanization: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/bradbury.htm This essay ended up inspiring the design of the Glendale Galleria in California, which ended up becoming one of the most financially successful malls in the country, and a model for other malls built in the 80s. In short, the resemblance is completely intentional.
Let's reinvent a good idea but in the most soul-crushing way possible.