I watch a lot of Dead Mall videos on YouTube and I wanted to see what everyone’s thoughts are on why there’s so many dead malls now.
The mall was dying by the 80’s, there was a sharp decline by then (I recall seeing numerous malls going vacant in the 90’s, around the country).
The things that drove mall popularity (especially things like large, enclosed, air-conditioned space), were no longer novel. Most cars were air-conditioned by then.
I’m sure there are many other factors, like the growth of free-standing single-vendor buildings (so construction and management costs must’ve changed).
Amazon really had nothing to do with it.
Combinations. Amazon, smart phones, how kids hang out, poverty, giant stores like target and wal mart…It’s a bunch of reasons that all hit against malls.
Malls haven’t been the only hit over the decades. “Cruisin” is no longer a thing. Teens used to spend hours on nice nights driving up and down a certain stretch of road in nearly every city somewhere.
More kids used to ride bikes around for funnies.
Drive in movie theaters used to be huge.
Things always change and it’s almost never just a single reason.
Part of that is also how in our car-centric society, our public transportation sucks. And biking is unsafe in many places— even spots that have bike lanes. Everything is too far way, so you can only get there by car. Everywhere you that is close is either unsafe or actually impossible to bike to, unless you’re lucky. And if you wanna take the metro or bus, it’s slow af, unreliable, and in many places has very few stops and runs infrequently.
And then the lack of people using public transportation only leads to more cars on the road which makes the problem even worse! More lanes, more land used for parking lot deserts, etc.
Nowhere to go, no way to get there, nothing to do.
This is one of my things I go off about. People sometimes tell me they want to move out of the city “for their kids” and I’m like are you crazy? The suburbs were hell as a kid. Can’t go anywhere because you don’t have a car and walking is dangerous and slow. I was always so jealous of my friends that lived in the city. They could just go do stuff
“Cruisin” is no longer a thing. Teens used to spend hours on nice nights driving up and down a certain stretch of road in nearly every city somewhere.
Not only is this no longer a thing it’s actually explicitly illegal in some places. Passing the same location 4 times within a short period or “driving without a destination” can get you a ticket if the cops are paying attention.
Yep. That’s the thing that never changes. “The man” is a total asshole killjoy.
That’s kinda fucked up. Almost sounds like laws targeting homeless people living out of their cars. And for anyone else, why shouldn’t I be able to just tour around and look at sights without necessarily stopping anywhere? That’s basically what I do every weekend for fun.
“Cruisin” is no longer a thing
That’s not the case in much of the rural US. In small towns (~30-75k) everywhere there are kids driving up and down the road every Friday and Saturday night.
It’s because they can’t remember where their meth dealer lives this week.
You’ll just have to trust me, or ask an old timer from one of those cities you speak of (I’m from one of several in the area). They’re about 1/4 the amount of traffic that they used to be.
My favorite stores in the mall in the 80s and early 90s were the Electronics Boutique, Waldenbooks, Tape World or Sam Goody, and Sharper Image. None of those thing exist anymore. When I go to the mall now, it’s 90% clothes and jewelry, and I’m just not that interested in it.
My kids like the rock/skate shops like B&C, Hot Topic, Zumiez, Vans… but it’s still just basically clothes.
Amazon certainly helped.
The stagnation of several anchor stores like Sears also helped. Sears was in serious decline well before Amazon became a major player in the market.
City Beautiful made a video video on the subject.
Great video thank you!
Malls were being killed by big box complexes before Amazon was prevalent, but the one-two punch didn’t do them any favors.
I see it as a combination of things…
Big box retailers.
Online sales.
People stopped going to movie theaters.So what’s the reason to go to a mall? Crappy food court food?
Paradoxically, I would still go to movies if they were willing to kick people out for using their phone once during the film. There’s only one theater in my area that’s strict like that.
So what’s the reason to go to a mall? Crappy food court food?
The last dozen or so times I’ve been to a mall, the only thing I’ve spent money on was food. It’s hard to justify spending money at the mall when I know I can get just about anything there from an online retailer for a lot cheaper. But I can’t get an Orange Julius online. Yet.
But I can’t get an Orange Julius online.
Uber Eats, Door Dash, Grubhub, etc. all exist for this exact type of purchase.
Although you will pay for the convenience, as opposed to it being cheaper like most other products since the physical store is still involved.
Yep, when you want your Orange Julius to cost $22
There’s a fuckin delicious Asian place in my local mall that has the best teriyaki chicken and fried rice I’ve ever had. That and Charley’s lemonade are a couple of the only reasons I go to my mall.
By charleys you mean the Philly cheesesteak place right? Love them, too bad there aren’t any near me
That’s the one. They also go by a different name in some other parts of the country, I think. I don’t remember what it is though.
There’s one about 45min away, just to far to justify, but maybe I’ll make it out there sometime
Out of curiosity; where are your grocery stores, pharmacies and post offices? Because here in Australia, most of them are in shopping centres (Aussie for ‘mall’). The vast majority of us go to do our weekly shop, grab medication, send back returns from our online shopping etc. so they’re still very much alive and well.
In America, there’s like 3 different things you could call a mall. When most people talk about them, it means a giant building with central indoor paths connecting a bunch of businesses. Typically, there would be a handful of “anchor” businesses, like department stores and a movie theater, and then space for a bunch of much smaller businesses in between including restaurants. These malls (at least the ones I’ve been to) for whatever reason don’t typically have grocery stores. I have seen pharmacies and small Dr’s offices in them.
Then there are “strip malls” that are typically a row of businesses on one side or surrounding a big parking lot. Typically grocery stores are in those.
Lastly, there’s “outlet malls”, which are often set up like a fake town with parking distributed throughout. They are commonly built on cheap land in the outskirts of towns, and they have mostly clothing. They are typically brand specific stores (e.g., Nike), so they are allegedly cheaper.
It’s that first category that Americans are going to be talking about if they just refer to a “mall”, though. The idea to have all your shops in a convenient place has been around forever, and still works great in many traditional business districts. The “shopping mall”, though, was somewhat of an artificial movement in the 80’s and 90’s that was always a bit destined to fail. Like people have said, the internet is partially responsible, but malls were hurting before the internet started really doing damage. In America, you basically have to drive everywhere, and if you are driving everywhere, it’s easiest to just drive directly to whatever shop you need. With malls, you have to park far out in a giant lot, and walk a long way to get to whatever business. You could call it lazy, but if you’ve only got a little bit of time after a day of work to do shopping, are you going to do the option where you get the task done in 30 minutes, or an hour?
Such an interesting perspective, thanks for your contribution! I guess our ‘shopping centres’ are essentially the first condition you’ve described that also have grocery stores attached, and it’s likely the grocery store (in Australia this basically means one of 3-4 companies) that are keeping these structures going in the modern age. Our shopping centres tend to be built ‘up’ rather than ‘out’, with 3-5 storey shopping centres (with up to 7 storey parking lots) being fairly common within city limits that are closely accessible to more than 50% of the population.
That being said though, I live fairly equidistant between two of the largest shopping centres in Sydney and still choose to go to my local, smaller, single-storey shopping centre which is very small by Australian standards (<40 stores) which feels much more like a ‘mall’.
Do you guys have a lot of standalone grocery stores that you can drive right up to, park, shop and leave? Because that’s definitely the minority here!
We definitely get most of our groceries from standalone grocery stores. For the most part, you drive right to it.
I just looked at some Sydney shopping centres, and they look much like our malls on the inside (except for groceries), but it seems like they are much more integrated in the neighborhoods. It looks like parking garages are more popular there than the giant lots here.
I just looked at the dead mall wikipedia page, and it has a picture of the century 3 mall. That’s a good example of what they look like here; separate from where people live, and surrounded by big lots. You can actually see the strip malls that replaced it all around it.
American malls are three categories. Generally when people say “the mall”, they mean big, indoor, enclosed malls. That’s what is dying a slow death.
A local example for me:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackamas_Town_Center
The problem has been the large anchor stores are going out of business and the stores that remain struggle to survive.
The kind of mall you describe, Americans call “strip malls” and are much smaller and open to the elements. A grocery store, maybe a bank, fast food, not an official post office, but a pack and ship location, sometimes a DMV. That kind of thing.
Strip malls also struggle, there’s one by my house where the big grocery store just closed leaving it maybe 50% vacant.
We also have stand alone grocery stores that aren’t part of strip malls that collect other small stores around it like mini-moons. Barbershops, laundromats, liquor stores.
As long as the grocery store operates, everyone does fine.
Edit Almost forgot… “Big Box Complexes”. Not really malls, just large block stores sharing a common parking lot. So like a Target, Home Depot, Best Buy, all stand alone stores with shared parking.
Take a Brazilian Lemonade recipe and sub in oranges. :) Make it at home.
Oohhh, that sounds delicious! My old boss at work was telling me about Brazilian lemonades a while back and I’ve been meaning to try it at some point.
Apparently there’s a recipe on that page. Here’s the same page without the crud: https://www.justtherecipe.com/?url=https://houseofnasheats.com/brazilian-lemonade-limeade/
Great website.
Right, there’s got to be a good reason to go to the mall. The successful malls still draw crowds because they have more than just stores and a movie theater.
Successful malls have an Apple Store, Tesla, and Louis Vuitton, which tells us something about who can still afford to shop there.
Indoor malls have been on the way out for a while. They’re large Indoor spaces that need to be heated or cooled and attract young people with no money and nowhere to go. Also in a mall you only buy so much as you tired of carrying it around. An outdoor Plaza encourages people to go back to their car and unload.
Big real estate killed malls. They aren’t as efficient at generating rent due to their maintenance and upkeep costs, so real estate holdings firms are hell bent on liquidating them, subdividing them, and redeveloping the land piecemeal in ways that better optimize for fine access control and not having to take care of any “dead” non-money-making spaces such as the concourses between the stores. Instead: just parking lots between store fronts.
Now there’s a Walmart, a Home Depot, an Applebee’s, a mattress store, a liquor store, and maybe a transient party supply store that will occasionally occupy a space on a seasonal basis. When a slot isn’t occupied by a tenant, they get to shut off the power, water, and climate control completely, and not have to end up wasting electricity or fuel conditioning the air of a space no one goes to right then.
If you WANTED to make a mall work, you could, especially if you added faux “residential” space (actually retail space where the product being sold is storage and privacy, with “sleep” being “against the rules” but they built it to intentionally not know that that’s what the “customers” are doing there). Residential malls would guarantee a constant customer and worker base as people come and go to visit family and friends and end up shopping along the way.
But they don’t want that.
They want to sell a MINIMUM viable product, and charge maximally for it.
Capitalists are always minmaxing …
They aren’t as efficient at generating rent due to their maintenance and upkeep costs, so real estate holdings firms are hell bent on liquidating them, subdividing them, and redeveloping the land piecemeal in ways that better optimize for fine access control and not having to take care of any “dead” non-money-making spaces such as the concourses between the stores. Instead: just parking lots between store fronts.
This is what happened near me. The malls got turned inside out, so it’s just big boxes around a giant parking lot.
our mall had an arcade, a waldenbooks, and a kiosk that sold gorgeous glass dragon figures.
can’t get any of those at amazon.
i miss it. :(
Dang, I kind of want one of those glass dragons. That sounds awesome
Malls were just a way to privatize mainstreet and allow the ownership class of capitalists to extract more money from a local economy through large chain stores and to give them private control over what used to be public space.
Now the middle class is worth a fraction of what it used to be, their purpose has dissolved.
People use Amazon instead of the mall because they can still afford the Temu-level garbage Amazon sells.
How can I turn this into the class struggle?
People use Amazon instead of the mall because they can still afford the Temu-level garbage Amazon sells.
I mean a few reasons.
- Pricing is better on Amazon vs mall. I can get a Gangsta Luffy T-shirt at $12 vs $20 at hot topic
- Inventory is significantly bigger. Outside of clothes, I can’t imagine not finding the exact online version and compare
- Malls are kinda ugly now. Many are indoor and just wall to wall commercialism.
- People suck. Naked dude stealing stop signs and angry Karen about the take a dump on the escalator.
- Driving vs ship to door.
- Both have temu-level garbage, but it’s cheaper on Amazon.
Indoor is good though. Floating around the mall is a good activity for shit weather days
Both have temu-level garbage, but it’s cheaper on Amazon.
Currently, as they are dying today, yes.
This is not how malls have traditionally worked.
In the past, malls provided a plug-and-play way for national chain retail to offer premium, private-labeled goods that allowed them to extract money away from a community’s locally owned stores found on main street.
as someone who lives in a fairly densly populated area, malls are almost directly tied to income levels of the local populace. malls in poorer neoghborhoods closed. upscale malls in rich neighborhoods are still thriving.
More joint households have both members in the work force limiting the amount of shopping being done between 9-5. Add to that the ease of ordering shit online. All of which is on top of malls requiring minors to be accompanied by adults. Add it all together and the result is noone goes to malls anymore.
Plus social media and the internet. Malls used to be teen hangout places but now there are a million more options that don’t involve the hassle of actually going somewhere.
I think it is safe to say, the internet i general killed malls as people stopped leaving their homes the way they used to in general.
I’d like to think it was a combination of all the online shopping sites for all your non-groceries that started killing them off.
Why go to a mall to buy that hat you always wanted when it’s not only available online on the website of wherever you are planning to go but could be cheaper? That, or just buy it on Am*zon.
That, and I firmly believe people in various first world countries have gotten lazy enough that they’ll gladly wait the however long it takes for something to arrive by mail, but spending the time to have to drive somewhere and walk from the parking lot to wherever in the mall the store they want is? Haell Nah! Combine that with inflation (meaning higher gas prices) and you have people not going to malls unless they have to.
It’s why surviving US malls usually have something to keep them alive to attract people anymore, I swear. Some sort of gimmick like that one well known mall with the amusement park in it or how the mall near where I live has an aquarium in it (never been, so I don’t know how effective it is at attracting people). I don’t think the restaurants you’ll find in malls are even enough to attract enough people keep malls afloat, either, but I could be dead wrong about that one.
Conventional brick and mortar retail is extremely expensive to maintain. It has less to do with Amazon specifically, and more to do with the rise of online retail & direct to consumer business models more generally. Don’t get me wrong, Amazon was a huge pioneer in that area, but it would have happened one way or another.
