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.
This is anecdotal to me, but I remember going to the mall a whole lot as a kid cuz my mom liked shopping at the stores there. Nowadays, she still shops at the same stores, but usually through their own websites. For me, when I learned how to drive and could go to the mall myself, it was probably only to go to a place like Gamestop, since the one in the mall was the closest to me. Again, online shopping, and especially being able to download games through like, Xbox Live, the eShop (and Steam, but I wasn’t really into PC gaming until much more recently) was much more convenient than having to drive 20-30 minutes to the mall.
EDIT: Another thing I remembered is that a Target opened up closer to where I lived, so it just became more convenient to shop there for stuff like cheap clothes vs brand name places like H&M. They also sold stuff you couldn’t buy at the mall like groceries, so it was more enticing, i guess.
Recently I went back to the mall I grew up around and it was a lot more empty. One of the really big stores that was there when I was a kid was Sears and they’re gone now, and that mall had a TON of space dedicated to Sears. No one has come to lease that space. The mall has a sprawling parking lot that’s mostly empty now.
I remember as a kid there were always like, crazy extravagant displays at the mall around the Holiday Season, and things like raffles where you could win a new car or something, but I don’t think any of that has happened there in recent years to nearly the same scale.
I wouldn’t say this mall is completely dead yet (I visited a different mall that had like, maybe 5 stores open and a lot of converted office space in it on a Saturday afternoon and that was eerie and dead while still being open to the public), but I think its on its way out.
I long for third spaces.
The mall is an ouroboros that demands I spend. But if it had a park combined with it, if it was just a series of semi-connected strip malls around a central or spread out park/walking path I’d be there constantly.
The mall just isn’t a enjoyable place to hang out unless you truly have no other choice, and even teenagers who don’t are opting to hang online because it’s less expensive and doesn’t require transit.
Yes! I’m amazed at how few responses here bring up the lack of attraction in a mall. Nearly every square foot has been given up for dumb kiosks for cell phone cases or something like that. There’s just nothing to give some warm fuzzies about visiting - a water feature, a kids play area… Heck, I grew up near the first indoor mall and at one point they had a giant parakeet cage. If one landed on your finger, you could keep the bird.
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.
In addition to the other replies, items there were just too expensive. Now, items are too expensive without the mall, and it’s not to do with regular/mid-low level management, supply chain costs, but due to price gouging, in order to pay executive, board, and and other major share holders/investors. (See the Economic Policy Institute reports on this, for more info).
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.
“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.
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.
Yep. That’s the thing that never changes. “The man” is a total asshole killjoy.
“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.
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.
It’s because they can’t remember where their meth dealer lives this week.
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
Yes, yes, and yes.
As someone who lives through the height of the mall era I’m sad to see the go personally. However before online shopping it was sort of a pain in the ass. Not only did you have to go to the mall for clothes shopping sometimes you would have to go to more than one. I remember school clothes shopping would be a multi day affair to buy some jeans and shirts and a pair of shoes. If the mall didn’t have the store you needed you would sometimes have to drive really far to go to that store. If the mall didn’t have what you needed you were sort of SOL. So when online shopping started to provide anything you want in a few clicks it was not just the hard to obtain stuff people bought it was everything else too. But it’s sad so many teenage sagas played out in malls for me. Friendships were solidified and dating occured there. It was a place you could hang out for a few hours with no parents and navigate teenage social life. I am sure teens will just do something else but it holds a special place in my memory.
Amazon did more for killing off small businesses – the big box store chains did more for killing off shopping malls (their preference is the strip mall where they can showcase their entire frontage (and do an end-run around building codes))
and yes, everyone is too broke on top of everything else
I remember hearing that big box stores killed malls. I thought they killed malls, and Amazon killed big box stores, but Amazon can also kill malls, so it was a bit of a double-whammy for malls
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.
I think “malls” in the traditional sense of giant concrete behemoths with nothing but row after row of stored and fast food were killed by online, but if you open up the definition a bit, some are thriving.
Like where I live, it’s an ‘archology’. A mix of residential units on top and commercial on the bottom. All outdoors which is a draw for folks in the forever pandemic world.
A mall that’s only random clothes, shoes, and jewellery stores surrounded by an ocean of parking lot is very unattractive.
As you say, a mall with actually useful stores, like grocery, pharmacy, perhaps a restaurant or two (not chain fast food), etc, with residential units on top or very close to constitutes more of a community than a mall and is very likely to be sustainable versus the former.
Man, I wish that became more of a thing here. I’m good enough at being a weird shut-in without the architecture pushing me to do so.
Stores are becoming less relevant by the day.
I only go to the mall for Dicks sporting goods or Apple which both have their own entrances. Have not walked inside the mall or any other stores in years.
I think higher education may have played a role. Kids have to spend more time studying for longer into their life. Less time for careless days of youth when every job requires 10 years of experience. Young people have been obsessing over how to fluff their CV with credentials rather thing just living life.
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
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.
