Shopping Malls are Getting Desperate

I think urban malls are still doing quite well in Europe and Asia, probably because their practical use is heightened by sitting directly upon major transit interchanges.

I'm guessing the fake trees are probably a response to the lesson learned by West Edmonton Mall, which single-handedly introduced cockroaches to the city in their imported palm trees.

As someone from Asia who has travelled the US, mall culture is very different. Giant malls in asia have huge daily traffic because it is right smack in the center of urban areas. They are conveniently in stops between train stations and bus terminals which ensure daily traffic as people commute. It is nearby condominiums, offices and universities too. Nobody needs a car to get to a mall. It's a short ride away. In the US, the suburban setup requires people to have a car and drive to a mall or anywhere. I was stunned people drive from Wal-mart to a mall just across the street. Nobody walked. Maybe because it's on a highway? In asia, you don't even have to buy anything and you'd find yourself inside a mall on your way to everywhere. And once you're inside one, pretty much anyone in the family can spend the whole day doing all sorts of activities and meet again for dinner without stepping out. When the day is done, a bus or train is just in one of the exits if you don't have a car. Also, I am amazed how the US have such huge parking lots outside the mall -which means driving to the next building. Asia is quite crammed and rarely will one see outside parking as most are underground or are built attached to the building. I love both, the malls in Asia just seem a lot more inviting and with so much going on for everyone, not just shopping. And for all of the above, even with online platforms, malls aren't going anytime soon this side of the world.

When indoor malls removed all of the convenient benches for shoppers to sit down and relax for a few minutes, I never went back.

As someone living in Asia, where malls continue to thrive, hearing about the decline of malls in the USA and Canada always intrigues me. Have you ever thought of doing a comparison of how malls here and over there are built and how some of these contribute to their continued relevance here versus their decline over there? The one factor I can think of is that our malls are better integrated into public transport, though there has to be more to it than that.

It is crazy seeing crowded malls in 2022, but they're all in Asia. Malls here in the US are seen as depressing relics of the past now.

Maybe malls in US are dying but in Asia its thriving, thats because, malls in Asia are more than just a department store, its a complex which integrates community function. It has a church, clinics, drugstores, family entertainment and even government office where you can get your licences and the like, and recently its being integrated with condos too and it makes life very convenient. Ps, they dont use fake plants here, they have actual gardens and more recently malls have dog parks too.

I was a Mall Rat back in the 80's. They were considered a cool place to hang out back then because no other environment like an indoor mall existed. Popular media made them even more popular. But over the years the selection of stores has dwindled to the point that there is nothing for a man to need or want at the mall. Anchor stores like Sears and Mervyns died, the cutlery and pipe tobacco shops went away and now all that's left are jewelry stores, women's clothing, footwear and cellphone kiosks. Our local mall put in an arcade and bowling alley but it just won't work. The kids that attend places like arcades are generally not wanted in the other stores.

I once took a potted 18" tall Areca palm into reception where I work (hotel in the UK). 8 years later it was 12 foot tall, with the same diameter, and took up about 20% of the room. I think that plant earned us more positive reviews than any of our team's efforts.

How do people not find this dystopian

I don’t know why shopping malls moved away from the original design: to be an entire community unto itself, with housing, recreation, shopping, and entertainment all in one spot. I used to work at old orchard mall. That place should have housing units on top of the retail stores!

Regarding the Cinnabon smell, that too is a big trick. They have locations in malls and airports on purpose so that the smells can linger. Cinnamon rolls are baked every 30 minutes at minimum, and to keep the scent in the air, some stores even warm up sheets of just cinnamon and brown sugar! Ovens are also placed near the front of the store so that the smell "escapes" when employees open the oven doors. Franchisees of the bakery are told to buy the "weakest hood possible" that is legal for their ovens. With the rise of online shopping and of course the pandemic, malls have struggled and shuttered. Now they're reinventing themselves to be more appealing to everyone, whether it be to include indoor water parks and theme parks like the American Dream Meadowlands or a housing development. But Cheesecake Factory is the peak of American malls. Its decor screams "Let's further treat ourselves and eat here before shopping some more". Sure they're weird with their dictionary-sized menus, but that's what makes them stand out. The first restaurant opened in 1978 in Beverly Hills, and the rest is history. I hope to open just a street of Cheesecake Factories but they're all different designs with statues of me.

I've been to malls in Asia with real plants inside. It depends on the luxury level of said mall. Cheap neighborhood malls usually uses fake plants, high end condo malls and destination malls usually have real plants.

I love the term Disneyfication. Whenever I see an overly complex environment that is fake, I reflexively start wondering how much extra I'm paying on anything I spend here just for the privilege of being in this cartoon environment

The reason why Victor Gruen turned his back on malls was because developers refused to include on-site housing, offices both workplaces and professional office buildings, public services such as police, fire, libraries, etc, and recreational amenities.

The thumbnail is a picture of the Villagio mall in Doha, Qatar. It's a huge mall themed after Venice, Italy. Yes I know that re-recreating Venice in a mall in the middle of the desert is a crazy idea, but that's the Gulf for you. Malls are a cornerstone of society in the Gulf, it's where we tend to hang out with our friends, have business lunches, and do our shopping. During the super hot summer months, malls are literally the only public place where you can hang out and meetup with others, that's how essential malls are in our part of the world.

In Germany and France malls are doing very well despite the fakeness. However malls are always in walking distance of neighbourhoods, their almost always surrounded by shopping streets and food stores, they tend to have a park nearby and they’re easily accessible by public transport.

I studied Archaeology and a lot of Archaeology is the history of Architecture. The whole point of most large scale building was to be Surreal. Faux nature was everywhere. The Papyrus columns of Karnak. The ponds, pools and gardens of Mesopotamia. There are references to scents being used to influence people back into ancient India. The complex of Stonehenge was designed to move people between the common and spirit worlds. Architecture was to inspire, terrify, impress. As other commenters have noted malls are doing fine in other parts of the world, so the nature of what a mall is cannot be the whole explanation for why the seem to be fading in the US. You seem very enamoured of Urban areas. But the shopping is failing there at the same rates as malls. Large stretches of shopping districts in NYC are half empty. I tend to attribute it to the general shift to internet shopping. There are Amazon Lockers all over. Amazon Go Stores are a thing. An issue I don't think you discuss enough is the Finance end of building. You can call buildings a physical embodiment of a business idea. Many malls failed because of poor financial management, and outright Shenanigans with the books. Like all retail, these are not high margin businesses and cannot tolerate huge debt loads.

Malls are well-patronized in Southern California. My mall has a youth theater group, jewelry repair, massage therapy, an alterations lady, & a cosmetology school, as well as stores and a food court. It's cool in the summer and serves the community well.

"Floors of epoxy made to look like stone" is why malls always had a funny, strange sort of smell to me that I could never quite place; it was epoxy fumes (I am sensitive to that sort of thing).