When I was a kid, the mall was pretty fun. It was maybe a half hour drive (?) and we went maybe once or twice a year. The bookstore was great, the toy store was fun (but certainly NOT Toys'R'Us), and ... Damn if I can remember anything else good. The food court was okay, it had variety. I think once or twice I got to ice skate in the rink.
When I was no longer a kid, I don't think I went anywhere but the book stores. The shops seemed to decay from uninteresting clothes and stupid knick-knacks to even stupider versions. The names were stupid. "Chess" and "Guess" were two that deserve a holy water burial. My name for these types was "Things Best Forgotten". That should have been on their sign.
I will admit that Sears was a solid draw. Their tools and sometimes other products often took me to a mall. Park by their entrance, walk in to Sears, buy, and then walk straight out to the parking lot.
A few times as an adult, I went to a mall specifically to go to the bookstore to buy software. Again, shortest path in and out.
As the video suggests, malls do have an incredible advantage in being a comfortable environment. But the claimed price of $200/ft is insane. And the mix of businesses "serving" the tenants does not make sense. Really, how valuable is it having a hair salon in walking distance? A store selling daily staples would be more sensible. Maybe they should examine the systems of residence and commerce in European cities? Or at least NYC?
This kinda hits home for me. The last week, I took off reading the nooze, in favor of some escapism...going down the Internet rabbit hole, I found a couple of Urban Explorers' channels. Sal and Ace's Adventures. Both of them are Dead-Mall aficionados - and Ace is from Western New York, part of my onetime home turf.
The Lake Erie coastline cities are LOUSY with failed malls. Randall Park, Rolling Acres, Chapel Hill, Euclid Square...Warren (PA) Mall, Thruway Mall, Erieview Galleria, Eastern Hills...it's a long list, and I knew many of those places.
Watched them die, some of them. It was obvious how it happened. Rolling Acres, which I lived five miles from, was the most extreme example.
It was built on rural land just outside Akron. Lots of money out that way at the time. The mall came, and now, lots of low-wage jobs opened up. Akron is not a very big city - it was a ten-minute ride from the 'hood to the mall.
Apartments went up. The neighborhood, which hadn't existed, immediately took on a flavor. A lower-socio-economic flavor.
Rolling Acres was to attract the high-end shoppers, but 15 years after it opened, it was a playpen for idle teenagers. Many of them moving in groups; and then in gangs.
Middle-class women got nervous about taking their kids to such a retail venue. They had choices - two other malls in Akron and about eight in Cleveland. Sales fell.
Then a few bodies popped up in far corners of the parking area. Anchor stores declined to renew their leases. The storefronts started appearing vacant.
The mall was sold, to asset-strippers who quit on maintenance and payment of utility bills.
The last anchor, Sears (2009) who owned their own building attached to the mall, converted to a Sears Outlet store and put up a wall to prevent egress into the mall.
The power company cut the power and the city locked it up.
It took six years to find a buyer, during which time scrappers, gangs and vandals ran riot in the mall.
It's now an Amazon Fulfillment Centre. No public traffic - which is appropriate for what the neighborhood has become, gritty ghetto.
Point of all this is: You cannot have a Mall-style retail infrastructure, without a modern Western middle-class social structure. Take away social diktats about public deportment; take away Rule of Law; take away civility, and the mall dies like a girded tree.
It is NOT WORKABLE. Basically, it's not workable in the social structure we're in, right now. We can't even have a mail-order Drop-Shipment retail structure, for all the Porch Pirates who'll snatch packages from your doorstep.