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).
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.