In the US, did Amazon kill the mall, is everyone too broke, or a combination of other factors?
I watch a lot of Dead Mall videos on YouTube and I wanted to see what everyone's thoughts are on why there's so many dead malls now.
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I think "malls" in the traditional sense of giant concrete behemoths with nothing but row after row of stored and fast food were killed by online, but if you open up the definition a bit, some are thriving.
Like where I live, it's an 'archology'. A mix of residential units on top and commercial on the bottom. All outdoors which is a draw for folks in the forever pandemic world.
A mall that's only random clothes, shoes, and jewellery stores surrounded by an ocean of parking lot is very unattractive.
As you say, a mall with actually useful stores, like grocery, pharmacy, perhaps a restaurant or two (not chain fast food), etc, with residential units on top or very close to constitutes more of a community than a mall and is very likely to be sustainable versus the former.
Man, I wish that became more of a thing here. I'm good enough at being a weird shut-in without the architecture pushing me to do so.