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Dudewitbow ,

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.

Roopappy ,

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.

forgotmylastusername ,

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.

Instigate ,

Speaking from an outside perspective; malls (what we call shopping centres) in Australia didn’t die anywhere near what has happened in the US. We have a very different geographic landscape (hyper-concentration of population in city centres) and definitely don’t have the same level of penetration that companies like Amazon do, but we have shared a lot of the same economic headwinds that the US has. From my armchair perspective, this would generally suggest that it’s less to do with economic position and more to do with idiosyncrasies of the US, but I have absolutely no data to back that up.

son_named_bort ,

We have shopping centers in the US and a lot of them are still thriving. They tend to be smaller than malls but they’re more numerous. They usually have one or two big stores like Target or Home Depot along with several smaller stores. They’re also not enclosed so it’s easier to get to a small store in a shopping center than it is in a mall.

Instigate ,

That’s really interesting! In the Australian content, we would only ever call a strip of shops a ‘mall’ if they weren’t connected by some interior structure. In fact, our ‘malls’ are almost all outdoor connections of shops. So interesting how our vocabularies vary!

boonhet ,

Hmm maybe what you call a mall in Australia is what Americans call a strip mall?

drascus ,

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.

Maeve ,

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).

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Its not any one thing, but a system of many things working against malls in a variety of manners:

  • The distance of malls from city centers stemming from white flight
  • Real estate development costs
  • Tax benefits and subsidies
  • The availability of online shopping and delivery
  • The appearance of super marts like Walmart, typically in other rural or suburban areas
  • Easier access to entertainment through the internet, social media, and mobile devices
  • Changing social norms
  • COVID
Moreless ,

What is white flight?

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Throughout the 60s, as city centers became more populous, an increasingly paranoid and racist section (boomers) started moving to the suburbs out of fear of being around black people. They took their wealth and ambitions with them, leading to broad suburban growth in many metropolitan areas, and eventual policy actions.

Notyou ,

Some places drained out or paved over pools just to make sure those scary people would enjoy themselves too much.

probableprotogen ,

One of the big problems is horrible city planning since the malls were just built anywhere they could be crammed into. Combine that with a very car-centeric country and you get very little reason to go out to the mall with the advent of the internet.

Draegur ,

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.

sem ,

Capitalists are always minmaxing …

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

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.

ColeSloth ,

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.

skulblaka ,
@skulblaka@sh.itjust.works avatar

“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.

xthexder ,
@xthexder@l.sw0.com avatar

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.

ColeSloth ,

Yep. That’s the thing that never changes. “The man” is a total asshole killjoy.

extremeboredom ,

“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.

ShepherdPie ,

It’s because they can’t remember where their meth dealer lives this week.

ColeSloth ,

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.

lenz , (edited )

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.

jjjalljs ,

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

systemglitch ,

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.

Hikermick ,

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.

feoh ,

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.

OminousOrange ,
@OminousOrange@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

CanadaPlus , (edited )

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.

Etterra ,

Yes, yes, and yes.

rem26_art , (edited )
@rem26_art@fedia.io avatar

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.

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