[echelon]

I have trouble buying clothes online. It's hard to determine fit, shipping things back is a hassle beyond comprehension, and it's impossible to try things on (which is fun).

Malls need to improve along a number of dimensions. Better dining, easier transportation or integration into live / work / play mixed use, and addition of grocery stores would make them better than Amazon.

Add a Target to any mall and it's twice as good. Add good food or a movie theater, and that's my weekend shopping destination.

Build instant check out. That'd be a game changer. One of the worst parts of shopping is the checkout process.

Malls need to improve. They can win, but they have to get better. Lean into the things Amazon can never do. Physical, social, evening or weekend as a destination you plan your time around.

[chaostheory]

> Malls need to improve along a number of dimensions. Better dining, easier transportation or integration into live / work / play mixed use, and addition of grocery stores would make them better than Amazon.

That's because no one implemented the original vision of the mall, at least in the US.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/05/07/victor_gruen_t...

"He imagined designing an environment full of greenery and shops: an indoor plaza that could be an island of connection in the middle of the sprawl, one that would get people out of their cars in order to walk and stroll within them. He saw his structure as an architectural panacea—it would remedy environmental, commercial, and sociological problems with the creation of a single building. Gruen presented his a solution for America: the shopping mall.

Gruen’s full vision for the mall was more than just shops. He imagined them as mixed-use facilities, with apartments, offices, medical centers, child care facilities, libraries, and (since it was the 1950s) bomb shelters. He wrote theoretical sketches of shopping malls long before he ever built one, but for a long time, none of his ideas came to fruition. Then in 1952, the owner of Dayton Company commissioned him to build the very first fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping center. It would be in Edina, Minnesota."

Of course, if everything was enclosed instead of open air as envisioned, it would have been a pandemic nightmare

[wikibob]

He is describing a city.

Not a North American city mind you, but a true old development city.

Human scale. People first, not cars. Everything you need to live within walking distance.

This is the vast majority of Europe.

[chaostheory]

Yes, but he planned on enclosing them all inside one structure so not really a city. Its more like an enclosed village or small town within a city. It’s a revolutionary idea that is being implemented in Asia as we speak

[hogFeast]

It is important to distinguish between malls and other types of property. Malls were built around cornerstone tenants, and the idea was agglomeration: one big tenant, lots of small single units, everyone wins. The death of malls is due to (often, but not always) location and amenities but, primarily, because the cornerstone tenants just sell things that no-one wants and they have way too much space.

Transportation is essential (and underrated). I am in the UK, we have a huge share of online retail but some large physical retailers are totally fine (Next is a well-known one)...if they pivoted their stores ten years ago to locations with strong traffic links. Local councils during the pandemic shut down parking, that basically finished small-time retail (not an exaggeration, most of these changes have been made permanent, single-unit operators won't ever be able to reopen because councils have shut down parking everywhere). And adding multi-use units (food, film, gyms, etc.) is also another strong play. But it is only easy to do this if your model doesn't revolve around a cornerstone tenant, and you have flexibility in your space. The locations doing well here have been able to flexibly add amenities (post-2008, these places were dead but slowly added restaurants as the economy recovered) and are composed of medium-sized units with no one cornerstone tenant.

The issue is largely structural. Most malls can't improve. They can't suddenly change the economics of having too much space. They can't change the price gap between warehouses and retail (or the debt backing these prices). The only solution is going to be BK and conversion into other forms of commercial property (largely warehouses but some offices/mixed-use). It will be other areas that thrive, not old areas being revived (look at what happened to inner cities when chain department stores took off and people moved to the suburbs...a lot of these places just died because the issue was structural).

[hsbauauvhabzb]

> I have trouble buying clothes online. It's hard to determine fit, shipping things back is a hassle beyond comprehension, and it's impossible to try things on (which is fun).

Same. Given we now have depth sensors and 3D modelling capabilities in our phones, sounds like something a disruptive startup could solve.

[Nasrudith]

The closest I have seen is in an online store for glasses whose name I cannot recall but might have some spam in my inbox from. They do a decent job with a "printed ruler for scale on your face plus phone camera" to do a "photoshop job" to show the look but not the feel yet. They also just don't seem to get that I buy eyeglasses mostly based upon perscription change and that after I buy is the worst time to send me ads.

[GloriousKoji]

> One of the worst parts of shopping is the checkout process.

It's always been parking for me.