The Mall Lives
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In the downtown area near Suntec/Raffles city, it feels like everything at ground level is a mall (aside from a few historical buildings). Below ground level, there are extensive malls connecting large buildings in the area. As a pedestrian, it's nice to get out of the sun and skip the long waits at the crosswalks, but I did not relish all the time spent in a mall atmosphere.
I stayed in a different neighborhood for the second half of the trip and it was nice to get away from the glitzy, high-end malls of downtown. I ended up encountering even more malls though! They were smaller, older, and more run-down but they were numerous and packed in tight. Many of the construction sites I saw there were for new malls.
The malls do provide a refreshing air-conditioned space when it's unbearable outside, but it was hard for me to get excited about them other than that. If you will be traveling to Singapore soon and you don't enjoy Western malls, good luck in your planning.
You can't work around the house on the weekend (because you can't afford a house). You don't go RV-ing for the weekend (because the are no RVs or places to take them). You don't go to the lake cabin (because you can't afford one).
I don't know, I must be missing something.
The Internet and technology, has largely killed the mall. Teenagers, for example, no longer need to go to the mall to exchange gossip and be "seen." They also have high amount of disposable income. (see: millennials and car usage for similar changes in a market) And Shopping online has become too easy for many people.
The malls that have been able to survive is due to the fact that they are more about entertainment (including shopping as a form of entertainment, such as "build-a-bear" and the like) rather than any other reason. This is one of the reasons that the city centers that have been re-developed have been successful. They're not urban shopping centers, they're urban entertainment centers that happen to have shopping.
There are other reasons that malls have been struggling as well (Suburban sprawl is a big one, especially due to factors such as in part, the Concentric Zone Model [0] (as housing stock gets older, and population increase, many persons move further out to newer/better/larger housing stock, and the previously housing is then taken up by a lower socio-economic class, which may no longer be able to support the local mall. So far, this has been repeating for the past 50ish years.)
The Mall may live, but they're on life support.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentric_zone_model note: There are problems with concentric zone model, but it's a model, it can still be good for explanations, especially in this case.
Is this true? Current data largely supports the opposite argument.
There's no trend of malls (in general) going away, but of old/overbuilt/poorly-located malls dying (or their market dying) while new malls (or new types of malls) are being built. Most major markets are experiencing retail growth (net positive total retail sqft market-wide), despite many bad malls dying off.
> They're not urban shopping centers, they're urban entertainment centers that happen to have shopping.
Malls have always had a significant amount of entertainment. Nearly every major mall has had (and still has) a movie theatre and multiple restaurants. Some of folks may even remember a time when almost every mall had an arcade in it.
http://www.costar.com/News/Article/As-Retail-Finally-Enters-...
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2014/may/08/costar-...
The "dead mall" story is a lot like pointing at Detroit or Flint or Baltimore and saying, "look at all those boarded up homes. Housing is dead! People hate having a place to live.". That may certainly be true in those specific areas, but most markets are actually experiencing modest-to-insane amounts of growth.
There are more old/overbuilt/poorly-located (again, not poorly located, but rather a victim of socio-economic and local changes) than there are new malls being built. And I have already made note of this fact. I already made note that new malls tend to be entertainment centers. There are more dying malls out there than there are new malls being built. And once again, a lot of those malls focus on entertainment (more than just food and a movie theater, and again, "shopping as entertainment") as well as high end goods. (you are not going to have 10 malls in a mid-size city each with a Louis Vuitton store, you're going to have 1, if they're a large enough city.)
"but most markets are actually experiencing modest-to-insane amounts of growth." Nope. Not at all. Cities are experiencing modest-to-insane amounts of growth. Many small cities, towns, rural communities are static or contracting at a modest-to-insane rate. And guess what is happening to the malls located in those communities? (again, I noted this in the og comment; people tend to pay attention to NYC, San Fran, other large cities. Most Americans do not live in those places, those places are not the norm, they are the exception. This is something that many commenters of HN who live in those large cities seem to not grasp.)
The dead malls are very much a part of the landscape, and will remain so (until they're torn down and redeveloped, which is what is supposed to happen.)
I wonder how much is because of helicopter parenting: parents won't let their kids out of their sight until they're 18 these days. That'll keep kids from going to the mall to hang out. Also, the middle class is dying out and people have less disposable income, and jobs fit for teenagers have all dried up; this probably means teens aren't getting cars as much and are stuck at home. However, even back when I was a teenager and hung out at the mall, we teenagers did little more than make the mall look busy. We didn't buy very much, except maybe ice cream cones, and dinner at food court.
Malls have always had crappy prices for a lot of stuff, but they were convenient. But now Amazon is more convenient, and a lot cheaper. The only thing keeping malls open these days is clothing stores; there's rarely book stores or electronics stores or music stores or other kinds of stores there any more, just clothes. You can buy clothes online, but it's a crappy experience because you can't try them on and you can't feel them. You can still buy consumer electronics and appliances at Sears, but they're teetering on the edge of bankruptcy so that isn't going to last long.
>There are other reasons that malls have been struggling as well (Suburban sprawl is a big one, especially due to factors such as in part, the Concentric Zone Model [0] (as housing stock gets older, and population increase, many persons move further out to newer/better/larger housing stock, and the previously housing is then taken up by a lower socio-economic class, which may no longer be able to support the local mall.
Yep, I saw this in Phoenix. The malls near the urban center are smaller and older, and not doing well. "Metrocenter" mall used to be a really nice mall decades ago, and these days it's derisively called "ghettocenter". If you go to those malls, you'll find half the stores closed, and wonder to yourself how they're still in business.
Indeed, in parts of London (and quite a few towns in outer London), the shopping centre basically is the high street.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-and...