[blackearl]

Malls need to be remade. I like the few I've gone to that are mostly outside or have some open airways and greenery, art, music, some sort of novelty event or thing to check out. I don't really miss giant generic malls at all. They're used more as a free babysitter and I hate visiting them.

[notacoward]

The funny thing is that the early malls were like that. The word "mall" originally just meant an open space, like the National Mall in DC or the "Cuba Mall" that I grew up near in Wellington, New Zealand.

The modern shopping mall is distinguished by a single financial entity which owns the land/buildings, provides shared infrastructure (e.g. parking/power), and rents it all out as a package to many mostly small tenants. Enclosure is an optional feature. Later in life I lived near one of the earliest US malls built on this model - Shoppers World in Framingham, MA. It was not enclosed. It was basically a ring (or maybe more of a figure eight) with two stories of balconies over a shared courtyard. The familiar enclosed structure came later.

Ironically, Shoppers World itself became unable to compete with the newer enclosed Natick Mall across the street, so it was torn down. Now the name persists, but it's basically a big parking lot with a dozen or so isolated big-box stores around the periphery.

[limograf]

Yep. It meant croquet lawn, basically. It's from Pall Mall (ultimately, ball hit / palla malleus) - the place Charles II played lawn games and around which fashionable people would promenade.

[dcolkitt]

In most suburban areas, the land malls sit on are worth far more than the structure. There's also a desperate need for housing in most metros. Particularly high density single family homes near the center of town.

It's cool to imagine alternate uses for existing malls, but I'm guessing the best thing to do would be to demolish them, then convert the land to small, dense housing developments.

[bsanr2]

Better yet, set aside some of that housing for small business owners who would have their locations in the development. Explicitly zone it for commerce as well as residential, like all of the old small town and city neighborhoods people are clamoring to get into.

[notacoward]

A while back I was hearing about large department stores, especially Sears/Primark, considering conversion to data centers. They're everywhere, so not hard to find one in a desired location, and they usually have good access to relevant kinds of infrastructure (especially power). And sellers who are desperate to wring some money out of them before they literally fall apart. Conversion wouldn't be free, of course, but it seemed like a way to get a new DC for far less than it would cost to build its equivalent from scratch. Haven't heard about the idea for a while now, though. Not sure why.

[telotortium]

The cloud happened, probably. The big cloud vendors have DCs in rural areas that have access to even cheaper power and unlimited land. I could see some colocations there, perhaps.

[wyre]

> the best thing to do would be to demolish them, then convert the land to small, dense housing developments.

This could be said about most real estate, I think.

[wil421]

Agreed. The more popular new shopping areas I’ve been are outdoor “malls”. Shopping mixed with outdoors, and as you said greenery, art, music and novelties.

A lot of indoor malls are dying. I can remember when the same empty places exploded in the 90s.

[treeman79]

Lots of parts of the country have unpleasant weather much of the year.

[colinmhayes]

We've got outdoor malls in Chicago. They're more popular than the indoor malls even in the winter.

[Groxx]

A "downtown with landscaping" basically. They're great, maybe with the exception of when it's windy + raining.

[steelframe]

> Lots of parts of the country have unpleasant weather much of the year.

I spent a large chunk of my formative years in a desert climate in the southwest. The sort of place where you would try to stay in air-conditioned spaces as often as possible during the summer. The regional mall was a huge air-conditioned enclosure where people would go just to sit around for hours on end with the occasional stroll through a department store.

In the 30 years since it first opened 2 of the 5 "anchor stores" closed. Other than that it's just been plugging along. One of the reviews I recently read for it was, "A great place to go when you're in a desert and need a mall."

[SkyPuncher]

I live in the northern Midwest. Our mall closed this past year and is being made into some sort of mixed-use outdoor space.

The reality is the cold weather doesn't really bother people who are use to it. I'm happy to spend time outside jumping store to store because I'll be dressed appropriately.

[jleyank]

Within limits. Some of the large cities in the cold parts of Canada have their malls underground connected by subway or metro. With some planning, non-natives can stay underground for months. It takes a little getting used to walking around in -20c weather or colder.

Across the border in Vermont, some of the strip malls have a glass-enclosed front layer for similar thermal protection.

[wombatpm]

That was the impetus for Minnesota to enclose Brookdale Mall in Brooklyn Center (1962), and Southdale in Edina MN (1956 and back drop for the movie Mall Rats).