What in the World Is Causing the Retail Meltdown of 2017?

All I know, is that when I go to any mall in my area, I tend to feel a little gross. Not gross like I feel in a wallmart, but gross enough not to want to be there. The lighting is wrong. The colors are wrong. The space feels constricting. The general energy feels wrong too. The end result is that the experience is draining.

I strongly suspect that another part of the problem is that the mall managers do a poor job managing the intangibles, and end up doing things to maximize short term profits. I've always been told to avoid mall retail space as a small player since malls will tend to turn the screws every year, until you're guaranteed to make no profit. And I think this strategy works until it doesn't. It makes sense to have high rents since it helps ensure that the highest quality tenants use a scarce resource (best example of this was the Eve economist raising rents in key locations to prop up the entire Eve economy), but I think it effects the overall diversity that may be necessary to foster in a place like a mall.