Malls hold no interest for me whatsoever. There's nothing there worthwhile, other than employment. Malls have nothing: no libraries, no Good Cafes, no places to hang out, no parks, no museums, no zoos, limited live music, no outdoors. And the few things it does have: like some book stores and places to eat, are all engineered to get you in and out and back to the Mall's singular focus: Spend, spend, spend: shop till you drop mentality.
However, I do feel bad for the people that will lose their jobs over it.
Let's make towns have downtowns, with beautiful brick roads, scenic ponds with some ducks, perhaps a waterfall, some nice cafes, a lawn with benches, some parks, some nature, trees, live music, a library and museums. It's okay to have some retails stores sprinkled around here and there, as long as they're original, and not those mass market plastic selling behemoaths we see everywhere.
I'm not disagreeing completely, but your location might be influencing your answer. I live in the northern portion of the USA, we get freezing winters and blistering summers. Come mid-winter...I am not going downtown to walk around outside, we don't hang out outside (unless we are talking winter sports, and then FULLY clothed). In summer, there needs to be shade. Fall and spring, we get wet.
But really, it seems like you want a town with more parks.
Completely agree that weather makes a huge difference to how much you enjoy strolling outdoors over being in a mall.
My main complaint about malls is how _loud_ they are: visually and auditory-ly (someone please tell me what the right word is). Malls are crowded, adorned in bright, garish colors, filled with stale food court food smells. There is very little seating other than at food courts, water fountains are hidden far away in some corner, loud music plays almost all the time, or it's noisy because of all the people. In sunny Silicon Valley, parking is a nightmare but there'll only be one bike stand hidden in a 50 acre space. It somehow has all of the worst features of a busy bazaar with almost none of the good (local products, "authentic"-ness, ability to haggle etc). Just standing in a shopping mall stresses me out.
It's possible that the present state of the art of mall design ticks the boxes for the largest audience possible and I'm the weirdo.
I think it's just that the things you want don't translate into a good return on investment for the owners and so they don't get implemented. (i.e. customers would like them, but it would not translate into a increase in shopping large enough to actually justify the investment from the owner's point of view).
My wider (and a bit tangential/ranty) theory is that the most tacky, tasteless and lacking self-control customers are actually the most profitable, hence businesses generally tend to pander to them. It's just much easier to extract unreasonable amounts of money from someone who's unreasonable (an adult child basically) than from someone sensible and reasonable, so for example us techies are not the target for a lot of companies.
There's no way the returns on investing in making the mall a pleasurable place to hang out in the short term outweigh the costs, but if people depended on malls as part of their area's social fabric, I doubt they would be facing this kind of longer-term decline.
This is why it’s tragic to have the primary public gathering spaces be privately owned and controlled with little insight or accountability from the public, only accessible by car and therefore cut off from the rest of the community by an ocean of parking lots and wide pedestrian-unfriendly streets.
The mall only cares about ROI, and providing a nice space for someone to sit and read a book, play hide and seek, host a club meeting, or stage a free play has little obvious monetary value.
Whatever amenities are provided will be carefully balanced against direct extra spending they bring in, instead of abstract civic improvement.
This really depends on which mall you go to. The Mall of America is not far off of Disney's Epcot center in terms of the amenities it provides. The Galleria in Houston is almost a city unto itself. I remember seeing a bridal party walking through it once, I'm guessing there was a chapel or function hall inside. A typical mall in Tampa, Florida, or Salem, NH has less charm, but those areas aren't working from a high base to begin with.
In dense urban areas, malls tend towards the high end and can be quite nice. The Shops at Copley Place in Boston is fairly high end in terms of shops and the architecture is nice. The Westfield in SF is nice in my recollection.
People do depend on malls as part of their area's social fabric. That's more true today than when Mall Rats was filmed, even though it's less cool now. It's the social fabric itself, not just the malls, which is disintegrating. Suburbia was never economically sustainable.
This has been discussed here before, and seems to be a bit of a blind spot for HN. Imagine you live in a place where there's only one "mall" nearby: that's most of America (geographically speaking).
Not an answer to your question exactly, but to the whole premise: Gruen transfer [0]. We have a great TV show by that name here in Australia that deconstructs advertising.
I'm in eastern Canada and I agree with your weather statement. With 100km/h winds, -25C and 1m of snow it's not worth going out. I wish we had a subway system here and underground shops.
Montreal and Toronto have huge indoor shopping areas connected by subway, I suppose technically they are malls.
So, growing up in the midwest, there is a museum dedicated to the area. It's on Main Street in the biggest town in the area. It's basement, which is now just used for storage, was part of an entire underground Main Street. You can still see the storefronts with the big windows and such down there. Apparently it stretched along most of downtown, mirroring the above.
Similarly, and while I don't have links on hand, Japan (at least Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo) have major shopping centers right in major train stations. The train station itself seems to be a destination.
There are gyms (generally Konami health clubs), food and shopping, and gardens on the rooftop.
In Osaka it seemed like every available square meter was converted to retail space. Shopping arcades, train station shops, underground causeways lined with shops, traditional malls. The back alleys have back alleys, and they're all lined with shops -- often specialty shops. I found one shop devoted to display cases for otaku to show off their model collection. Another shop specialized in LCD signs you could use in the storefront for your shop. It was NUTS.
And yeah, the first time I saw a Konami gym my mind boggled. Is this how Snake stays in such good shape? Use promo code Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start and get a 30-day free membership!
Yes and many people here, especially outside of the downtown / in the GTA, act like being outside for an hour is unbearable and that suburbs and cars are the only fix. They aren't.
Some weather can be worked around though. Some of Denver's more popular shopping areas are outdoor type malls. You just have to design them with the weather in mind with things like fire pits and heaters to use in the winter.
Denver gets very little precipitation so rain is something that generally is not an issue though.
Sure, they don't completely isolate humans from weather conditions but these solutions significantly improve the livability and prolonged usability of an urbanization, without burning bathtubs of gasoline to keep running.
Humans are not obliged to colonize every single corner of the planet...
To be fair, other places work with this issue. Ljubljana gets plenty cold and has a lovely downtown - one of the prettiest I know. However, it has very little parking (part of its appeal), meaning it would be illegal to build it in the US.
I think you could apply the same thing to an indoor area. Make it feel like a truly public place, with comfortable seating areas, buskers, pretty things to look at, more local products and less bland chains, and less pressure to buy stuff.
Spend, spend, spend: shop till you drop mentality.
If you think malls are only about consumerism then you've misunderstood a big part of their appeal for a lot of people. Young people and groups of friends don't go to the mall on their own. Malls merge consumerism with social activity - they're for people who enjoy shopping with their friends.
If that's not you then fair enough, but don't disparage malls simply because they don't appeal to you. If they disappear society will be worse for many, many people.
I'm not a sociologist, but my feeling is that malls are just a last resort place for young people to socialize that is unstructured and free of charge. That is: there isn't really anywhere else to go be with your friends without paying for the privilege, that isn't organized by adults (like school sports or church groups for instance). When I was growing up, we had the mall and we had parking lots, and the latter was only for the "bad kids". I get the sense that kids nowadays just hang out with each other online more as a replacement.
A recent video called “Why The Kids Need Stranger Things”[0] made exactly this point about the nostalgia of the Netflix series and how malls were a symbol of free-range kids[1]. Circumstances have changed so much that the creators assert Stranger Things could not be set in the present day.
The reason why free range parenting has gone down so much can be seen in the series.
There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means.
A world in which more free-range parenting is the norm inherently implies a world in which kids more often pay the consequences of their actions, which can be death or maiming.
We, as a society, do not seem to have a stomach for this, to the point where free-range parenting has been equated with neglect.
> There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means.
I watched it last night so it's fresh in my mind. It was paranormal events that setup this scene and made the bully go to such extremes to begin with.
It was also one of the worst, least believable scenes in the series. The fact that he was so willing to jump, the threats the bully was giving, etc. It was just weak writing in an attempt to create a dramatic reunion. When your 11 years old it takes some time to build up the courage to make a safe jump from something like a bridge, let alone a possible fatal jump.
It was believable to me because they had shown adults talking about people that had bragged to have jumped from there. I remember as a kid thinking that everything others bragged about was true and I was just lame. I totally see him thinking it would be no more dangerous than jumping from a bridge, just a bit scarier.
That's so weird. We in northern europe have no problem in letting our kids roam (Finland, but I presume the situation is similar in at least scandinavia).
I would guess that even in northern Europe there has probably been a substantial reduction of kids’ roaming distance and time spent unsupervised compared to 2 or 3 generations ago. This seems to be a worldwide trend (if not to the same extent in every place).
In the US one of the big problems is a culture of legal liability for every possible thing, and a general culture of fearfulness, excuse-making, and ass-covering instead of allowing moderate informed risks and dealing responsibly with the consequences. If you have too steep a slide, some kid is going to fall off and the parents will sue and bankrupt your town. If you let kids ride the bus by themselves, 1 kid in a million is going to get kidnapped and the parents will sue. Etc.
But there are surely other contributing factors: more families with 2 working parents (and more single parents) and in general less adults “hanging out” with an eye on their neighborhoods, a general degradation of community relationships and civic institutions, smaller family sizes (it’s much easier to chaperone 1 kid than 6), more middle-class angst about maximizing children’s future earning potential, more media attention on rare tragedies, communication improvements leading to less spontaneous social gatherings and more virtual socialization, increasing reliance on car transport and inaccessibility of unsupervised play spaces (especially undeveloped land), etc.
I think this is a big one, and not just rare tragedies but distant ones. 40 years ago you heard about the bad things in your village, now the 24 hour news cycle feeds a constant stream of fear from all over the world.
Yes there is a trend to 'protect' kids from everything. But in my country there is a clear counter-culture advocating agianst what they call 'rubber stone' society where everything is done to avoid possible danger.
There are now ads running on TV saying 'let boys be boys', let them climb trees, go out and explore etc...
We in the US didn't a few decades ago, either. Politicians and the media (with different motivations) deliberately creating false impressions of increasing risks mostly did that in.
I grew up in them Scandinavian countries, and my brother and I often spent the entire weekend outside out of sight from my parents. My earliest memory of that is when I was 7 years old.
I now live in the US and have kids about the same age.
The issue is not homogeneous culture or any other thing people with no brains come up with, but traffic density, at least in my case.
Where I used to live we could roam without having to cross dangerous streets. Where I live now, there's traffic everywhere and cars don't give a shit about people on foot, so my kids do not roam.
When I was a kid, we used to have vast areas to play safely. I just looked on Google Maps and the cross-country ski route we used to regularly take on weekends is 4 miles long. We had to cross ONE street. I used to bike about 10 miles one way, by myself, when I was a little older and keep on bike lanes the entire trip.
We also used to have large play areas in the backyard of every home I ever had. The bigger ones were the size of a typical New York borough block. We didn't have to leave our homes to get to a playground, or a park...we had one right outside of our door.
Obviously this sort of thing is easier to do / plan for when the entire country has less people than the city of New York.
My single greatest fear for letting my kid walk free when she's old enough to is that she'll be killed by a driver. This is compounded by the fact that as long as you say "Sorry mate didn't see you" it's OK to kill people with your car
(weird really - can you do that for killing people by any other means?)
My wife and I have semi-seriously considered moving to northern Scandinavia for both this reason and its comparative likelihood of remaining a decent (well, bearable, if only just) place to live in a clathrate-gun scenario.
There was a case not far from where I live where a driver turning right mowed down a 4-year-old child walking with his grandmother on a CROSSWALK. He wasn't running or anything like that, just crossing the street. The child died. They didn't even charge the driver. Fucking ridiculous. It was 100% the driver's fault. New York Times published an article written by the child's mother who questioned the logic of first of all call it an accident and second of all how the driver wasn't charged with anything, not even reckless driving.
I don't know how to change the mindset. A kid in san diego was killed in a bike lane while I lived there and everyone poured sympathy on the DRIVER, ffs, and blamed the kid for being there. It makes one weep, especially because people (Americans, at least) accept it.
Forgive me, but it seems that you're taking a common argument (X policy that works in Scandinavia won't work in the US because the US isn't homogeneous) and extending it to some sort of xenophobic dog-whistle (i.e. kids in the US can't roam because the US isn't homogeneous). Is there a more charitable way to interpret your comment?
Definitely an interesting point that children have less freedom today. But it's a bit of a stretch to say that this is what's causing the "safe space mentality". The narrator says the good old days of free range parenting led children to be more prone to questioning authority, which is healthy. If anything, you could argue that young people's assertion of their right to "safe spaces" is a form of rebellion in itself.
The video comes from FEE though, so it's obviously got a political bias behind it that explains it's opposition to safe spaces. People on the more socially conservative end of the spectrum don't seem to understand safe spaces and how they are actually a rejection of authority, rather than an appeal to authority. The notion of authority used is simply more subtle.
Some marginalised groups have made a very valid claim that there is a built-in hierarchy in many social norms that constitute acceptable behaviour in mainstream society. And that they tend to be on the shittier end of the deal in that hierarchy. Therefore, rather than acquiesce to the ordinary way of doing things and just accepting the negative effects of living in a world that doesn't value them as it does others, they have decided to carve out a space where they can assert their own version of what should be culturally acceptable. And they ask that others respect their desire for such a space and not enter it without also changing their behaviour and rejecting the toxic standard practices.
It's quite simple, it's like the cultural equivalent of libertarians trying to carve out a piece of land where they can keep the government out and live in their hyper-capitalist utopias. It's inherently anti-authoritarian. Anyone who goes into a safe space is voluntarily choosing to abide by its standards, no one is forcing them to.
As a person that just entered college and out of that time period, mall didnt do it for me because they are barren of things to do. There is nothing but things to buy and nothing of actual interest. I would rather go to a friends house and play games or watch a move at the theater than go to a mall because there is nothing there. The times when I went to a mall was because there was an arcade there that we would hang out at but that was the only point of interest. Other than that we would go elsewhere.
Yeah I should have used past tense. I don't think malls are cutting it now at all. But the "thing to do" there when I was young was to just with your friends without needing to spend any money, without any parents around, and in a busy enough place that you could get lost in the shuffle. Hanging out at a friend's house involves parents and going to the movies is expensive.
>Up to 80 malls across the United States enforce a curfew or escort policy for teenagers
I was still looking young in 2008 despite being well into my 20s and that's when I got IDed at a mall entrance. I was so annoyed/insulted by it I never went back to that mall every again. I can understand getting IDed at a bar, but not at a friggin mall.
Your story reminded me of when I went on a cruise for my honeymoon. There was a cruise employee who gave my new husband and me a stern warning about how we should not be on the cruise without our parents if we were under 18. (We were in our mid-20s.) So much of society today wants to keep people dependent on their parents forever, it seems.
I think it's more the case that roving gangs of teenagers put adults on edge. And for good reason. When you put 5 or 10 of the most conscientious teenagers together, collectively they're like a bull in a china shop.
Adults aren't much better, but they're much less energetic unless they've been drinking.
I think you misunderstand. Malls only end up as a social gathering spot when there's nowhere else to go. And even then, that only really appeals to teenagers who have nothing else to do. A mall would never be preferable to what was mentioned above, a downtown with brick paths and quality scenery/stores, etc.
Where I live it rains for 9 months out of the year (and is very hot 2 of the other months - we maybe get 1 month of nice outdoor weather a year). I'd much prefer an enclosed space. Though, let's be honest, I'd really prefer someone to just drop my purchases off at my doorstep so I don't have to deal with the weather at all.
We are only thinking of malls in the classic context.
For the last 10+ years many "malls" have been outdoor "areas" with shops, beautified walking paths, communal spaces, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. Essentially miniature downtowns.
We have both these and the classic style mall here. Only 2 or 3 classic malls any more. However, they are all VERY successful. There were 7-8 and I've watched many die, or be taken over by distribution hubs, data centers (think big non-customer facing building)
We've had about 3-4 outdoor malls developed in the last 10 years. All are going strong, albeit they are new.
Never? I certainly prefer a mall over a nice outdoor space (which I have available to me) when it’s freezing outside with a sheen of ice covering everything.
In those places some malls are bustling with activity every weekend, others are shuttering. One of the most popular malls in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is in fact an outdoor "town center," a nomenclature I take issue with. https://www.bayshoretowncenter.com/
The sad reality is that much of America, particularly suburban America but even in cities, public gathering places are nearly non-existent. The shopping mall (or more recently, lifestyle center, Festival Marketplaces, etc) is the closest thing many have to the town square or decently appointed public park.
However, the mall isn't a public space and things a healthy society allows for - protest, hand holding, being different looking, aren't necessarily allowed in a mall.
Regardless if a mall is preferable in 100 degree heat or -10 degree cold, those other spaces are important for other reasons.
> Young people and groups of friends don't go to the mall on their own. Malls merge consumerism with social activity - they're for people who enjoy shopping with their friends.
I don't think this has been true, at least in the US, since the 1990s.
Especially since a lot of malls intentionally made themselves unfriendly to students in high school and college in order to cater more to young families and affluent people.
They are hoist on their own petard, because as it turns out, the young families chose the big box stores to save money, and the affluent people are not numerous enough or consumerist enough to support more than one mall in their town. That mall gets the Brookstones and Sephoras and Victoria's Secrets and the Apple Stores. The other malls are full of basically nothing but cell phone vendor kiosks and a food court, and they die.
Malls made an intentional decision to push shopping over social activity, and killed their appeal, because you can shop from anywhere by using your phone, and 99% of what you want comes from a combination of your grocery store, big box store (possibly the same as your grocery store), and online shopping. There is now no reason whatsoever to physically travel to any mall in the US. They have only lame chain restaurants, the Borders/Waldenbooks has been closed for decades, the good music store closed and only the corporate sellout store remains, the Radio Shack is gone, Sears left, JCPenney is kaput, but you have plenty of stores that sell "fashion" to teen girls, including the ubiquitous Express, Justice, Forever 21, and Hot Topic. So the mall is where your mom takes you when the clothes at Wal-Mart, Target, or Kohl's aren't good enough any more.
I think if malls had gone the other direction, perhaps by adding mid-size under-21 live music venues as anchors, they would not be falling apart today.
You touch on one of the key points toward the end. Many of the traditional anchor stores are dead or dying and there are very few newer candidates healthy enough to take their place.
At our local mall, there's a sign warning that under 18 aren't allowed without adults.
They also removed much of what would attract teens and that age group. And many of the "older person stores" are ridiculously priced. Amazon, Walmart online, Aliexpress, and others are cheaper.
Malls are full of expensive stuff, not very good stuff, and caters to nobody in particular.
I know for us, it's because "Payless Shoes" that has cheap size 15's is the only reason why. So we beeline in, and out.
Mall security is what is unsustainable. I'm old by HN standards gen-X and I grew up with mall security hating me. Now mall security has under 18 kids arrested, which is worse. The point is for decades of formative years "the mall is that place where they hate me because of who I am". So its understandable that now that I'm in their prime demographic (older, financially well off) that I have no interest in going there.
You'd have to be older than gen-x to remember malls favorably as a teen. The place to socialize is/was high school sports in (ahem, under) the stands, and darkly lit movie theaters. Since the 80s, which is a long time ago, trying to hang out at the mall will get you kicked out by rentacops or arrested.
Another problem is the dead mall death spiral has no backwards movement, can only ratchet toward death. The closest mall to me went 95% womens clothing stores a long time ago and is now on the march toward having its sixth athletic shoe store. Its a one way path to foreclosure, like a diode action only moving one way. I don't buy womens clothes, so other than taking my wife or daughter there, its already dead to me...
Its interesting that when I was a kid the mall provided the novelty of everything under one roof. Then big box stores happened and there is no appeal to lots of little box stores under one roof when I can just go to Target or Walmart. Walmart today is the early 80s mall of my youth.
I think you make a lot of good points. Not having grown up in the US, I don't have an immediate aversion towards malls. And as a guy who loves fashion, malls offer me a way to checkout a whole bunch of different styles, which is worth the slightly higher prices (at least for me anyways). Besides, they do have sales when the prices are somewhat better.
But even I have embraced online stores. Every major fashion brand has an online store, and its just much too convenient to order online rather than have to drive to a mall etc.etc. I would rather, read a book or hang out with friends over a beer.
Which brings me to an excellent observation you made: most stores in malls are reorienting to serve more women. I think women love the social aspects of shopping (i.e. trying out new clothes with friends and getting their opinions) as much as the actual shopping itself, which is probably why many women continue to go to malls.
I think Malls are missing out on some great opportunities to be entertainment centers. They get the footfall; instead of orienting towards selling shit, they should be trying to provide some kind of experience.
Also see the constraint on "mom is stuck with the kids" to this day even in 2017 etc. So a movie theater is a hard sell if mom has the baby in the stroller.
Of course going to the mall implies having money and a car, which means the library is accessible, so having story time at the mall merely replicates a service that's barely getting by somewhere else; better off just driving to the library or whatever rather than imitating it and splitting the participants such that possibly neither can be a success.
Indeed. I know it's changed a ton since I grew up in the '80s.
I remember Spaceport and Aladin's castle. .25$ arcades, and $1 gave 5 tokens. You could play for hours just on $5. And they allowed kids, competitions, and all sorts of things. I'd go hang out while my parents were shopping, and just chill.
There also used to be, in quite a lot of the malls, a jungle gym or playground area. They'd be full of kids, and you could just chill and hang out, except for free. But there were usually age limits so you didn't hurt little ones. And around this was always a common area. Lots of tables, food places, coffee shop or 2.
Clubs and nonprofits would meet here - it was a huge commons area. I remember fondly playing chess on chess club nights. Played some pretty awesome pros there.
And the companies there.. You had Sears, Estee Lauder, Nordstrom, and all those big name box stores. And then you'd have all sorts of smaller stores scattered, with rarely ever any room left over (1-2 empty plots due to eventual turnover). But there was something for everyone. Maybe it was a candy store, or a toy store, or specialty thing.
That's all changed.
Arcades are gone. Yeah, there's one 35 miles away from me, in the next city over. The jungle gyms and playgrounds were deemed dangerous and unsupervised, so they were decommissioned. You know, for "safety". And those tables? Yeah, those only encourage bums and lazy people to congregate, so they're right out.
And those clubs? Yeah, they need to pay rent if they want to have a group, so they too were summarily kicked out (Well.. it is private property :/ ). And now with less people, those food vendors started closing. That coffee shop had not enough customers and moved/closed. The rest of the food vendors (whom you've never heard of), now started skimping hard and jacking the prices.
And that's not to add in the compounding issues with online stores. A single online store can house millions of products. No real retailer can do that. So, you see the big box stores being squeezed by both the malls running people out, higher prices than online, and better selection than online. So, they end up closing and going bankrupt. It's not any one fault here, but a compound effect that set these things in motion.
For me, its that single shoe place. I make a point to park at the closest place to get in, try on shoes, and get out. There's nothing else here for me. And clothing is really the last bastion of something you really should be in person for - cause sending back stuff sucks.
In my town (Southern NH) the local Simon Mall actually solicits clubs. My wife's "Mom's Club" is offered freebies to host events there. E.g. they'll comp a photo package with Santa in the winter knowing that it'll get 30 middle-class moms in and shopping.
I wish our local mall would do that. I've asked, and they just flatly say no. They're already suffering pretty bad with quite a few storefronts abandoned. I think our paper said something like 20% are empty.
It'd only be a small amount of electricity used, and a bit of janitors they already have. They could pull in a few non-profit groups doing fun stuff (game club, moms club as you said, techie club, etc.) and drum up foot traffic and business. But given the doom-and-gloom article after article, I'm guessing they're looking for as many ways to cut costs as possible.
I figure our mall has a few years left. There's enough shops like "Lidz", candy stores, some weird smelly pet store, the usual 16-21 girly clothing stores, the goth store (spencers), a Target, and a few others. But the life's certainly being drained out step by step.
Go to a mall on the weekend and tell me. Maybe the malls are dying in dead cities, but they're booming in LA who already has plenty of mom and pop shops too. Both are thriving.
For many people malls are a comfortable place with free air conditioning during the summer months. Free internet also helps. I've seen McDonalds also serve a similar local function.
> Let's make towns have downtowns, with beautiful brick roads, scenic ponds with some ducks, perhaps a waterfall, some nice cafes, a lawn with benches, some parks, some nature, trees, live music, a library and museums.
You would think! I live in Santa Monica, California, and we have exactly that in our downtown area. The retail shop turnover is insane -- a large amount of shops come and go from the area, despite the massive amount of foot traffic the area sees every weekend (and most weekdays during the summer).
No... SM is a bit wack. The prices are so high, only big businesses can afford to be there. So most stores are big franchises. And it's too touristy for any culture. Main St is better, and towards Venice.
I would also nominate DTLA. Downtown is lit. Parking is wack though.
Consumers are no longer interested in old retail chains. They follow influencers and their original brands, but they're mostly direct to consumer, and everything arrives in two days anyway.
SM is loud and very touristy. Buskers are allowed amps for their guitars and I can't count the number of languages spoken. It's more of an airport terminal than anything approaching 'local'. God have mercy on you at the pier. I'd go Culver City, as a better 'local' kinda thing, but even then you need to get up to SB to really stand a chance of a quiet coffee on the street.
> Parking is wack though.
Literally all of LA is like this. Pro-tip, in SM, park at the library. Cheaper and easier to get in/out.
Even Beverly Hills has great parking. The major bottleneck downtown is parking right now and has been for a while. SM moved fast to build multiple parking structures... and that's where all the foot traffic comes from. Not sure why DTLA is so nonchalant about this. Don't see any construction whatsoever.
You don’t see any construction in DTLA? Are we both living in 2017?
It seems like every other day a new 40+ story mixed-use tower, with requisite parking structure, is breaking ground around here.
The thing that baffled me about downtown’s parking situation was how so many otherwise undeveloped parking lots managed to stick around given the opportunity cost of land downtown. That was until I realized a production crew can’t set up base camp in a parking garage.
> Not sure why DTLA is so nonchalant about this. Don't see any construction whatsoever.
Presumably because LA finally managed to make a section of the city livable and they don't want to hasten its demise. Parking has pretty massive costs for quality of life and the livability of a city.
LA is just in a weird transition point right now, where even a furious pace of transit building isn't going to remake the car-centric infrastructure overnight.
Third street promenade is a disaster area from the perspective you describe. It's a classical tourist funnel designed to extract the most from them.
As noted in another comment, Main St. is a bit better with some ok food, bars and coffee shops, but the retail side doesn't offer much. Most likely out of sheer need for survival due to super expensive lease rates, most retail is oriented towards tourists, with a little bit reserved for ultra wealthy of the area.
It's a tourist trap mall that looks like a downtown complete with a fair bit of mixed use residential+retail+commercial dense-ish developments.
The point that people overlook there is that the aesthetics—indoor mall vs outdoor pedestrian-friendly throughway through a central part of a town—don't actually matter nearly as much as thought, since if you went at 10AM on a Thursday you'd think it was just a nice little downtown with a surprisingly high amount of retail in a small town next to LA.
And there are definitely good cafes, parks, and a library, yet all you're seeing here is still just a lot of people complaining about it. So maybe those aren't the critical components the OP seems to think they are.
There's no reason you couldn't turn the space and structure of a stereotypical 80s mall into a different sort of organizing space, without a whole "we need traditional looking downtowns" push.
I concur. High foot traffic does not result in steady state retail om the local streets. I've lived in the far east and despite heavy mom and pop representation, the turnover is insane _and_ due to lack of aircon in the mom and pops, people flock to malls due to free aircon.
Aeon mall in Nagoya, Japan[1] was my primary daily grocery and pharmacy for years. Aeon's format is pretty much the same as most suburban American malls, but they seem to run a tighter ship and do a better job of vertical integration. (I used to marvel at how insanely mirror-clean the floors were in a place where probably a few tens of thousands of people tread daily.) Prices for things like groceries are not the lowest you can find in Japan, but they're good enough. They often have an area where you can buy local farm produce, a high-quality butcher, prepared bento, okashi, etc.
They have a good restaurant selection, too, with a not-depressing food court and a set of good-to-great restaurants. For families, the mall is still genuinely one-stop shopping for clothes, pet supplies, groceries, bikes, dining out, etc.
I often find myself missing my old, reliable Aeon when I'm abroad. I think malls like Aeon deliver on the promise that malls in America fall short on. Aeon is also the biggest retailer in Asia, IIRC.
The UAE is similar in that malls are very organized and controlled.
A typical mall would have a food court, a large arcade for kids, a daycare (or two), pharmacies, coffee shops, a book store, a furniture store, and so on. Also, unlike from what I've seen here in the US, any decent mall must contain a large supermarket (usually Carrefour). Malls in the UAE are therefore a "one stop shop" that people go to every week to buy groceries and household supplies.
Given how hot it can get over there, it makes absolute sense to have everything in one, air conditioned building.
In the US, that market has been taken over by Walmart. It is effectively the "one stop shop" that people visit weekly for everything from groceries to small furniture.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if Walmart has had almost as much of a negative impact on malls as Amazon and its ilk have.
An average Walmart is nothing like the malls I'm talking about. Heck, Carrefour itself already provides everything Walmart does, minus maybe the Walmart money and vision centers.
Imagine putting a Walmart inside of an average US mall. Now crank up the number of stores and activities to 11. That's how major malls in the UAE are like.
I wasn't meaning to imply that Walmart is "good", just that it would tend to suck the life out of similar ventures in the US. Its sort of like how Lowes and Home Depot effectively put Sears onto its last legs.
It isn't exactly that one is a substitute for the other, but one managed to effectively destroy the highest grossing businesses of the other.
Also, I've been in a mall in the US that effectively had a Walmart as an anchor. It was "interesting" and strangely it probably contributed to that mall's competitiveness in the area.
If you have been in a Target, then it's that but more run down. In Canada Walmart is equivalent to USA's Target quality wise. There is also zellers & kmart.
Yeah, but it really feels like they have gotten away from the original vision. I remember when malls had arcades (ok, and outdated concept in itself) and regular community events. But it seems like these don't produce enough revenue, so malls have optimized themselves into a revenue model that removes their natural appeal as a third place.
I think that malls could make a huge comeback with a focus on events that naturally draw people in and an emphasis on the kinds of high-touch products that people generally do prefer to buy in person.
> I think that malls could make a huge comeback with a focus on events that naturally draw people in and an emphasis on the kinds of high-touch products that people generally do prefer to buy in person.
Land prices in the cities where malls are developed have inflated past the carrying capacity of the prevailing disposable income in the same areas.
There have been some attempts, I guess. Dave & Busters seems to do pretty well, but these seem to be targeted at adults and the games are nothing like the old days, IMO.
I feel like the arcade concept could potentially be brought back, but it would require some creative thinking.
People have, there are many "barcades" in large cities around the US. As the name suggests they combine alcohol, food, and arcade/pinball machines (depending on the location I've seen free to play and token machines)
Yes, malls are all those things and I agree completely with your solutions, but malls aren't the worst - that, I'd say, are the drive-through mentality strip development stores that line suburban streets all over the US. At least with malls there's a semblance of people walking and interacting in person.
I feel like this is a sign of the times. Inflation has outstripped our disposable income that our previous generation has spent on consumerism or infrastructure to enable more consumption (malls, easy capital) and we are now reaping the rewards that our generation can't afford.
Malls are super fun. I loved hanging out with friends at the food courts and just walking around the mall going into Wizards of the Coast or Spencer gifts.
When you're 13 it's like one of the few places that large where you can hang out without parents around.
But yeah that was when I was 13. They haven't really innovated much. It's a great place for kids but no so much for adults. I thought almost everyone had a great childhood mall experiences haha, but I guess not.
Stanford Shopping Center and the Santa Monica downtown thing (I forget what it's called) are very close to what you describe.
What malls do have is space, and that kind of large space owned by a single entity is rare these days within a reasonable travel time away. Redevelopment potential is definitely there.
Also, a professor of mine once wondered why we don't have great public spaces like they do in Europe. Then he realized that we do -- in the form of college campuses.
Look at Stanford Shopping Center in the satellite view sometime: a bunch of rectangles surrounded by an ocean of surface parking.
It's much more like a conventional mall than a downtown: It's effectively walled off from the rest of the neighbordood. You're expected to go there by driving your car, and it's isolated by its massive parking lots so nobody would consider walking in or out a pleasant experience.
This is why I end up on University St all the time and almost never go to Stanford Shopping Center even though it's a bit closer, pleasant and I like a few of the restaurants/cafes.
What I would really like is for a few blocks of University to become pedestrian-only with lots of outdoor seating for its cafes and restaurants. (The same goes for other downtown areas in the South Bay, like Santa Cruz in Menlo Park.) It's amazing how little outdoor seating we have in the Bay Area despite the amazing weather.
Something like Forest or Hamilton Ave becoming pedestrian only would be great.
That being said, University Ave becoming increasingly "corporate blasé" in its selection of restaurants (basically great for a business meeting and little else) is sad to see.
That's true -- but it's a requirement of SV suburbia tbh. Density isn't high enough anywhere to support retail activity without a huge investment in parking, even in downtown MV or PA.
The personal vehicle oriented commutes exacerbate this.
Yes, but downtown Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Carlos, hell, even Redwood City are the polar opposite of the Stanford Mall. The fact that a bunch of vendors of overpriced trinkets happens to have outdoor passageways is more a factor of the good weather of the bay area than it is an indicator of some kind of difference from your generic indoor megamall.
There's a difference between needing parking, and surrounding an area with a moat of parked cars.
I think one big problem retail is facing is that, for a long time, efficiency won the day. The chains and their supply chains and economies of scale drove more and more mom and pops out of business, and then only the really efficient chains could survive, and then they had to refinance and take on all this debt that the article mentions, and pretty soon there's absolutely nothing to mourn, and no reason not to buy from Amazon rather than drive to a Best Buy. Some truly unique independent mom and pop or local shops could be worth spending a few bucks more than Amazon to patronize. GenericMall stores give me 0 reason to patronize them over Amazon.
Malls reliably have enough parking. Getting downtown is a major (and slow) production, particularly if your downtown is progressive enough to intentionally deter access by car.
Santana Row has been fairly successful in creating a sustainable artificial "downtown" mall in suburban San Jose. No ducks or waterfalls, but they frequently have live music and the café is decent.
The other side of that is Santana row caters to high end buyers looking for high end brands that most malls won't carry. It's a bit of an edge case. They do have a Fogo de Chao though so that makes it cool in my book :D .
>However, I do feel bad for the people that will lose their jobs over it.
I'm not aware of anyone there--except maybe... jewelers?--that enjoy long-term careers at a mall. It's like an entire parking lot full of McDonalds. They'll find new jobs. Everyone at Circuit City managed to move.
And I'm in no way bashing retail or food worker. I used to tell people I did a "five year tour of duty at Sam's Clubs and I've got the [five year] medal to prove it." My point is that those jobs are both 1) crap working conditions and pay. and 2) easily transferable to comparable jobs at other employers.
Circuit City disappeared and the world moved on. K-Mart is still around but everyone who values their careers has already jumped ship. Block Buster is gone and the world keeps ticking. Mall store employees will continue on.
The real question is why no malls either care to, or are unable to, attract stores that appeal to customers. We are definitely becoming more hermit-like as a society, but there's got to be "something" most non-hermits enjoy. The whole purpose of the Mall is a bunch of stores that add value to each other by being near each other. "I bring Dad for a lawn mower, and the kids hit the arcade." (Man, I miss finding quarters and taking them to the arcades.) So my point here is, single stores still exist, so clearly it's not "stores in general" going out, but more "the stores malls want" people care less about.
>The real question is why no malls either care to, or are unable to, attract stores that appeal to customers.
No, the 'real reason' has nothing to do with shopping. The article touched on the actual problem. It is way too easy to get into billions of dollars in debt. If you own mall real estate, who do you want at your mall.
Small businesses that attract customers, but have to pay you with money they earn.
Or
Large chains that earn earn billions by playing leveraged debt games, and will pay stupidly high rates for rent, no customers required.
Malls will survive just fine, the moment rents and property prices are back in touch with reality.
I agree with you 95%. But 5% of me recognizes that certain items require a test run before purchase. In my case those would be Audio equipment, instruments and tennis rackets. None of those can be confidently purchased solely on the impressions of others.
And return them just as quickly. My wife will go through 4-5 online orders to find clothing that fits as advertised, returning a majority of each purchase.
Hard for anyone but Amazon to maintain that kind of return throughput.
I learned recently that even Amazon is banning people for returns. My first thought was that they must have returned a ton of products, but after a quick "banned from amazon" search online it showed that many people with a return rate as low as 9% have been banned. Which doesn't seem like a lot especially if we're talking about clothing. Here's one example, but there's plenty more if you do a quick search:
I don't know that it is for online purchases. My wife is buying clothes and shoes off Amazon lately and we are on our third return for one pair of shoes because their size guide online doesn't correspond to what they send us at all. That's a 200% return rate on a single item, and that's only if we get the correct one shipped to us this time. Non commodity items have turned into a major crapshoot online.
Online shopping has spoiled me for convenience compared to shopping in person though. What's happened is that I've just ended up not buying as many things because I was trained to expect convenance and then it was taken away
I buy on Amazon a lot and I don't think I return more than one or two things in a year, typically. Even buying shoes online (I usually use Zappos) I haven't returned that many.
Do you buy clothes or shoes? Ive never had to return toilet paper, but we got a pair of boots that were a different size from the listing when they arrived
Sure, to a degree, but these are different. And people that really care about clothes and/or furniture probably don't buy them sight unseen. For a lot of people, any good couch or shirt is probably good enough. But a guitar needs to be right for the individual. The difference between the right and wrong guitar can be significant, and is also something that will bother you every day.
Furniture is probably, next to a house and a car, among the most expensive things most people will purchase. And frankly I'm sure a lot of people just buy whatever guitar anyway, especially thinking back to the never-used one I used to have.
>> And frankly I'm sure a lot of people just buy whatever guitar anyway, especially thinking back to the never-used one I used to have
Surely you recognize that your mindset while purchasing that guitar was different than that of a serious musician investing a substantial sum in an instrument they'll play for thousands of hours.
I think the key point here is that that set is probably small for most people and also differs from person to person. Someone else might insist on trying their keyboard but be happy to buy a bike online. And that's before we take into account people trying out goods in-store and then buying them online.
I've, ironically, had the best luck lately with the small shops in the airports. They're much more willing to let you test their top-of-the-line headphones than any big box retailer.
Yes, to me, it is worth the slight price premium to reward that convenience.
I guess when people walk into an airport shop looking for headphones, they aren't just window shopping, they absolutely intend to buy a pair because they need it for the flight.
That could quickly change once people get fully accustomed to in-flight wireless: browse the web for a shortlist on the first leg, feign interest at the stopover shop, price-compare and commit on the connecting flight.
The logical consequence would be manufacturer stalls replacing shops in the waiting areas (like a permanent trade fair) and Amazon adding pick-up warehouses to the exits.
Malls should transform into upper levels for residences and lower levels for businesses and relaxation. landscape all the parking down to a decent size business parking for those in the mall and separate parkign for residents.
no reason failing malls cannot be remade into such. It has been done and no reason they cannot be a hub for such.
but as mass transportation and cars whacked mom&pop stores so the internet reduces the needs for boutique type stores and small chain merchandise oriented stores.
I'm not going to defend malls, but clearly there needs to be some kind of market place where people can encounter things they don't expect. We are already experiencing a media landscape with a filter bubble. Views become more narrow and extreme. You are going to need to have a place where you see things you think you wouldn't buy or want, otherwise your experience of world is going to get more narrow.
Amazon is extremely good at that, and they have a strong financial motivation to do so.
I'll agree with and extend your remarks on a tangent that at one point in human history literacy was nice but not required to participate in the economy. Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. You'll pick out your next bicycle by reading technical manuals and holding a ruler up to your leg, or you'll fail miserably at buying a bicycle. Just like its sad that illiterate or innumerate people get screwed in todays economy, people who can't shop like an engineer are going to get screwed in coming decades. What you're looking at is evolution of the economy to increase income inequality as it always does and increase specialization as it always does and require more work out of people as it always does. There's nothing really new about it, its just people who can't shop like an engineer are just not going to be able to shop anymore, at least not successfully, just like someone illiterate has a rough time shopping today.
> Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation.
Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff.
> [...] soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. You'll pick out your next bicycle by reading technical manuals and holding a ruler up to your leg, or you'll fail miserably at buying a bicycle.
I don't know what kind of bicycle shopping you're envisioning, but it sounds pretty damn weird to me. It's kind of hard to buy a bike that just doesn't work at all for most people. Even if your bike is several sizes off, it's just going to be more obnoxious to pedal. I'm in Boston, and I see tons of people commute around on bikes which really don't fit them at all and they do just fine. Even the crappiest bike is leagues better than walking
Also, I don't know how many people currently buy their bikes online who aren't already really into cycling vs people who buy them used or at a brick and mortar store, but I doubt it's high compared to, say, clothes.
[Edit]
> Just like its sad that illiterate or innumerate people get screwed in todays economy, people who can't shop like an engineer are going to get screwed in coming decades.
The type of shopping behavior you're describing is a luxury of the rich, not a necessity for most people. If you were to say, "not-wealthy people will be screwed over in the decades to come" I'd agree and point out that that's already the case.
> Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff.
This is a pretty odd assumption. Why do you assume that doing your research means valuing money _less_?
If anything, I would assume the opposite. I grew up lower middle class with a scholarship to a school full of upper class kids, and doing my research usually meant getting the best value for my money : when you have lots of money, it's often easier to just throw a bunch of money at the most commonly purchased product perceived as luxury instead of spending your time doing research on which provides the best value.
There’s a big difference between comparison shopping for prices and the type of shopping you described with your bike example. The former is something that everyone who’s remotely frugal does, and the latter is something that people who want to get The Best Thing (ie not out of necessity) do. That research to find The Best Thing takes a whole lot of time and energy, and lots of people just don’t have that.
Your bike example doesn’t really make much sense, because for the vast majority of people, the cheapest bike will do. Most people don’t bother measuring themselves first, and there’s basically no need to do so at all.
[edit]
To clarify: I don’t think that doing the type of research you described on a thing you’re buying means you value money less, but that it means you probably aren’t shopping for that thing out of necessity.
I think we're crossing signals WRT I'm talking about engineers shopping like the guy using a parametric search and examining some data sheets to find the correct resistor for a circuit, vs you're thinking I'm talking about engineer as a proxy name for well paid individual, which is admittedly usually true. There is a moderately high minimum required cognitive level to successfully use search interfaces and study what the component data sheets say, and do not say, about a device, vs the requirements of the design, combined with a bit of buyer beware ("hey, it says right here on page 7 of the engineering data sheet that this little surface mount resistors maximum voltage rating is 200 volts so using it as a bleeder resistor in a switching power supply is kinda all your fault...")
I think you’re assuming that the cognitive requirements for being an engineer are somehow higher than what most people can meet. I don’t think that’s true, and it seems like an extraordinary claim to make.
Isn't a walkable commerce area suitable? I've lost count of the number of stores I've wandered into, mostly because I live in one of the most walkable parts of the country.
>Malls hold no interest for me whatsoever. There's nothing there worthwhile, other than employment. Malls have nothing: no libraries, no Good Cafes, no places to hang out, no parks, no museums, no zoos, limited live music, no outdoors.
Which makes sense, as their main purpose is to be places to shop for clothes, electronics, kitchenware, and so on, not any of those other things.
I agree with you but when I go to the malls in Santa Clara and San Jose (they have food courts close to where I work at times) the malls are surprisingly crowded with usual suspects of teenagers/mothers with children/older possibly retired people/people like me.
I've noticed when traveling, in smaller to medium sized cities there may be a failed mall; sometimes these failed malls become great community centers, until the owners noticed they have traffic and wreak it. So stupid.
There are two problems with downtowns, in a tiny city, giant city, whatever.
First of all downtown already has a purpose which is to extract middle class home equity, run it thru the retail and restaurant wringer where 95% of businesses fail in the first two years or whatever. Its easy for the city to run downtown; the city doesn't have to worry about parking, for example, because those businesses are designed to fail and new suckers appear as fast as home equity loans can be sold so they don't need parking for businesses that don't have customers LOL. This also becomes self fulfilling, downtown is for dead businesses so why would I go there unless I had to because by definition the businesses downtown suck or they wouldn't be downtown where businesses go to die?
Secondly the downtown has drunks, criminals, crazy people, panhandlers, drug addicts in various state of withdrawl, buskers, homeless, and many/most cities are constrained to the light touch, which is nice for those folks, but also means nobody wants to go there. Crazy people have to go somewhere, and downtown has the church mission and a park by the river and a liquor store for self medication. I'm not even remotely interested in hanging out with those people, so I'll go to the Target at the interstate exit instead, or more than a generation ago I'd have gone to a mall where security is at least not non-existent. Your example of a park bench will have a homeless person sleeping on it, the scenic pond will have a drunk peeing in it, the cafes nobody wants to sit at because of aggressive panhandlers and the smell of excrement from the streets and alleys... You're asking for the whites-only exburbs where the average sales price is above $800K to keep out the riff raff that's 30+ miles out of town, I live by those places and they're cool but unachievable for 90% of the population. I live in the 3rd richest suburb in my metro area and even here our downtown is dying, getting overrun. The economy of the future is clustered around interstate exits not some arbitrary place where a railroad put a depot 150 years ago.
I don't know where you are getting the idea that people are congregating around interstate exits now other than your personal experience. Car ownership has been trending down in the US for a few years and the urban population as a percentage of total population has also been growing for a long time.
Most of the “urban” growth is in suburbs though. According to the census bureau myself and my two neighbors on a collective 70 acres of land live in an urban area. True urban core growth is mostly in a small number of places and a narrow demographic.
same with airports - just why do we need sooooooo many shops right next to the terminals? I understand travelers might need some basic stuff (food, water etc) but why other crap, especially so close to the terminals? no wonder airports are so huge
There's a lot of downtime for travelers, so shops are a good way for airports to make money, and for travelers to relieve boredom. The airports aren't big because of the shops, they're big because the planes and tarmacs need tons of space.
However, I do feel bad for the people that will lose their jobs over it.
Let's make towns have downtowns, with beautiful brick roads, scenic ponds with some ducks, perhaps a waterfall, some nice cafes, a lawn with benches, some parks, some nature, trees, live music, a library and museums. It's okay to have some retails stores sprinkled around here and there, as long as they're original, and not those mass market plastic selling behemoaths we see everywhere.