[beambot]

Malls can definitely obtain natural lighting if architected properly (eg sky lights and light pipes) -- malls are no different than other commercial offices.

For example: I used to work at GoogleX's "San Antonio station", which was a converted shopping mall, and it had great lighting, even on lower floors.

With multiple employers in same building, you'd also have many more socializing options -- including random colleagues who drop by to run errands.

Besides, what would you suggest instead -- let them turn into suburban blight?!

[admax88q]

They're already a suburban blight. Just teat them down. Put a park there instead.

[beambot]

Where does the money come from? Cities are cash-strapped, which makes demolition & park development unlikely. Existing property owners aren't exactly in the business of giving away prime realestate or operating charities -- they'd probably opt for more suburban housing developments.

[pharmakom]

Cities are cash strapped due to low density sprawl, of which malls are just one kind.

[beambot]

So one person acquiesces to "no solution because it's a chicken and egg problem." Another says "let it rot into decaying blight."

Even if suboptimal, revitalizing the mall as a co-working space sounds like a less-bad solution to me. Still open to practical alternatives though. ;)

[admax88q]

Cities are not cash strapped, they just claim to be when they don't want to pay for something. Most cities have tons of cash flow paying for roads, services like garbage/recycling, maintaining existing parks.

If they really cant find the money sell it to developers to make condos or single family homes.

[cableshaft]

Somehow a small city I used to live in managed to do it. The mall declined to the point that all that was left were the anchor stores and a few other internal stores when they decided to demolish it.

They left the major anchor stores (Target, Von Maur, Hobby Lobby), turned most of the center of the mall into parking lots, and put up a few multi-store strips around it, and it went from empty to having thriving businesses that have mostly all remained the past 16 years.

This guy has more details and took some pictures of the mall just before they closed it:

http://www.labelscar.com/illinois/college-hills-mall

[alistairSH]

The city would only pay for redevelopment if it owned the land underneath and that land was unsellable. And if that's the case, the city has bigger problems than the mall (something like Detroit, where, for many years, there was simply nobody there to buy/use/redevelop).

Provide the right financial incentives and a developer should be able to do it on terms favorable to the city (vs getting little/no revenue from a derelict mall complex).

[atat7024]

Us. The money will come from us.

Or RoboCop. You choose.

[circleit]

Vertical aquaponics farms. Organic fresh produce and protein for every area produced locally.

[vkou]

Indoor square footage is not, and will never will be a relevant constraint on food production.

At $400/square foot to build a mall, and $XY/square foot/year to maintain it, the only thing that makes financial sense to grow in one is black market marijuana.