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.
Its not any one thing, but a system of many things working against malls in a variety of manners:
What is white flight?
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.
Some places drained out or paved over pools just to make sure those scary people would enjoy themselves too much.
Malls killed individual stores. They were bolstered by a heavily car-centric society.
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.
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.
It was always short sighted tax policy. We're just living with the blowback.
But in 1954, apparently intending to stimulate capital investment in manufacturing in order to counter a mild recession, Congress replaced the straight-line approach with "accelerated depreciation," which enabled owners to take huge deductions in the early years of a project’s life. This, Hanchett says, "transformed real-estate development into a lucrative ‘tax shelter.’ An investor making a profit from rental of a new building usually avoided all taxes on that income, since the ‘loss’ from depreciation canceled it out. And when the depreciation exceeded profits from the building itself—as it virtually always did in early years—the investor could use the excess ‘loss’ to cut other income taxes." With realestate values going up during the 1950s and ’60s, savvy investors "could build a structure, claim ‘losses’ for several years while enjoying tax-free income, then sell the project for more than they had originally invested."
Since the "accelerated depreciation" rule did not apply to renovation of existing buildings, investors "now looked away from established downtowns, where vacant land was scarce and new construction difficult," Hanchett says. "Instead, they rushed to put their money into projects at the suburban fringe—especially into shopping centers.
http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/in-essence/why-america-got-malled
That's really interesting! I'd heard the white flight explanation for downtowns falling apart, but this adds a new layer to it
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.
People use Amazon instead of the mall because they can still afford the Temu-level garbage Amazon sells.
I mean a few reasons.
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.
Indoor is good though. Floating around the mall is a good activity for shit weather days
Birthed by and killed by capitalism. Tone deaf retailers charging too much for not enough for too long PLUS general trend to take away "free" public places where regular people can casually gather and kill a few hours having low/no cost fun.
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.
When I was a teenager the local mall made it quite clear that they didn’t want teenagers in the mall. I think it just stuck for a lot of us.
The mall near me used to be a place where kids could get together even if they didn't have money to spend all day buying things. They made a rule that young people in groups of more than 3 would be treated like a gang. I have no sympathy for them losing patrons.
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.
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.
Capitalists are always minmaxing ...
Anecdotal, but I grew up in the heyday of malls and my local mall was one of the largest, and is now one of the most famous dead malls. The mall was in decline when Amazon was still in its infancy, mostly still selling books. Buying clothes online was considered lunacy at the time because there was no fitting rooms to try things on. Still, vacancy was on the rise in the mall and once a few violent crimes started happening inside that was all she wrote. "Big Box" stores like Walmart became more of a draw than driving all the way to the mall.
I think the reasons for the death of the mall are more complex, just like the death of the department store. There were lots of weird tax incentives, both for developers, and for (mostly white) residents fleeing the urban core during the 90s. Those were not sustainable. Malls themselves were a bit of a private equity shell game which couldn't last. The story of dead malls is more about capitalism and land use policy than just Amazon.
I'll never forget Forest Fair Mall in those first years though. It's 1.5 MILLION square feet, and it was absolutely packed, especially during Christmas. Humongous fountains, sand sculptures, live music... every single spot of its airfield-like parking lot was full. The only thing today that I think comes close, if younger people want the experience, is the main concourse of a top ten airport.
Hrm. No one has mentioned the decline of middle class wages.
I remember in the ... late 70s/early 80s my mother would drag us to the mall nearly every weekend. She was there to buy clothes. She always wanted something new and she wanted to try on at least a dozen items before buying one or two. I was thrilled when I was old enough to go off to the record store and/or hobby store while she did that. Earlier, I begged to go the the toy store, but was typically refused. Later, I was at the book store getting paperback scifi.
I don't think people have as much disposable income as they did then. I don't know many people who can buy as much frivolous stuff as my folks used to. I guess I could technically buy stuff all the time, but I want to save fore retirement. My folks had pensions. I have to put it away myself.
The disappearance of defined benefit retirement plans is yet another way those on top are boning us, and it is NOT being talked about enough.
It actually screws us 2 ways. First, by removing liability/responsibility from the company and putting it on people. Second, by forcing everyone to have to car about the stock market, and be subject to its whims
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :(
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.
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.
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.
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.
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