Asklemmy

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:

• 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

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.

Stores are becoming less relevant by the day.

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

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.

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.

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.

Honestly malls are thriving where I live, and I go regularly to extremely large crowds. I know it's a trend worldwide, but if all I knew was my local city, I would have no idea.

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.

This is a fascinating question. I don't think it was just Amazon either. Although the price undercutting definitely helped.

Like many others here, I remember malls having lots of cool smaller shops with various specialties. Toys, books, electronics, games, clothes, decor, whatever. It's where you'd find more niche things.

Like if "Spencer's Gifts" wasn't 99% raunchy sex stuff now. (Although hey, there was that too.)

It was funny in the 90's watching this idea of teenage girls coming back with a multi-bag haul from a mall run. Ha! Not anymore.

Nowadays though, in my big metropolitan area malls are doing okay, but you get two classes generally:

1. Run down, sketchy malls, with stores that can't afford to decorate their storefront but they'll have weird stuff like wall-hanger katanas and other almost-weaponry alongside dragon statues and glass pipes and stuff. Stores like this are punctuated by pushy kiosks that try to sell you snake oil.

These malls are still kinda hanging on. The ones here are trying to do cool things like theaters and experiences. I think it can be a cool place for fledgling businesses to do more experimental stuff. Unfortunately, the said-sketchiness still makes them a bit unappealing to visit.

2. Bougie malls, more numerous here. Every one is a clone because it features the exact same fashion-brand super-empires. And no, your working-class butt isn't their target audience. Keep moving, because they removed the benches too. Along the way, you will still be harassed by pushy kiosks, but the snake oil is in much fancier packaging!

Each individual suite has like 15 items on display that cost more than the suited foot-aching sales person makes in 6 months before taxes.

I have no idea how these places are still running. Lol

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.

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.