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Comment by cwbrandsma | Hacker News Reader

I'm not disagreeing completely, but your location might be influencing your answer. I live in the northern portion of the USA, we get freezing winters and blistering summers. Come mid-winter...I am not going downtown to walk around outside, we don't hang out outside (unless we are talking winter sports, and then FULLY clothed). In summer, there needs to be shade. Fall and spring, we get wet.

But really, it seems like you want a town with more parks.

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Completely agree that weather makes a huge difference to how much you enjoy strolling outdoors over being in a mall.

My main complaint about malls is how _loud_ they are: visually and auditory-ly (someone please tell me what the right word is). Malls are crowded, adorned in bright, garish colors, filled with stale food court food smells. There is very little seating other than at food courts, water fountains are hidden far away in some corner, loud music plays almost all the time, or it's noisy because of all the people. In sunny Silicon Valley, parking is a nightmare but there'll only be one bike stand hidden in a 50 acre space. It somehow has all of the worst features of a busy bazaar with almost none of the good (local products, "authentic"-ness, ability to haggle etc). Just standing in a shopping mall stresses me out.

It's possible that the present state of the art of mall design ticks the boxes for the largest audience possible and I'm the weirdo.

RE: your grammar question: "Auditorily"

Ah of course. Thanks

I've also heard/used 'aurally'

src - http://www.dictionary.com/browse/aurally

I think it's just that the things you want don't translate into a good return on investment for the owners and so they don't get implemented. (i.e. customers would like them, but it would not translate into a increase in shopping large enough to actually justify the investment from the owner's point of view).

My wider (and a bit tangential/ranty) theory is that the most tacky, tasteless and lacking self-control customers are actually the most profitable, hence businesses generally tend to pander to them. It's just much easier to extract unreasonable amounts of money from someone who's unreasonable (an adult child basically) than from someone sensible and reasonable, so for example us techies are not the target for a lot of companies.

There's no way the returns on investing in making the mall a pleasurable place to hang out in the short term outweigh the costs, but if people depended on malls as part of their area's social fabric, I doubt they would be facing this kind of longer-term decline.

This really depends on which mall you go to. The Mall of America is not far off of Disney's Epcot center in terms of the amenities it provides. The Galleria in Houston is almost a city unto itself. I remember seeing a bridal party walking through it once, I'm guessing there was a chapel or function hall inside. A typical mall in Tampa, Florida, or Salem, NH has less charm, but those areas aren't working from a high base to begin with.

In dense urban areas, malls tend towards the high end and can be quite nice. The Shops at Copley Place in Boston is fairly high end in terms of shops and the architecture is nice. The Westfield in SF is nice in my recollection.

Yup. Mall of America literally has a zoo (Sea Life Minnesota Aquarium) and an indoor amusement park.

People do depend on malls as part of their area's social fabric. That's more true today than when Mall Rats was filmed, even though it's less cool now. It's the social fabric itself, not just the malls, which is disintegrating. Suburbia was never economically sustainable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400448

This has been discussed here before, and seems to be a bit of a blind spot for HN. Imagine you live in a place where there's only one "mall" nearby: that's most of America (geographically speaking).

This is why it’s tragic to have the primary public gathering spaces be privately owned and controlled with little insight or accountability from the public, only accessible by car and therefore cut off from the rest of the community by an ocean of parking lots and wide pedestrian-unfriendly streets.

The mall only cares about ROI, and providing a nice space for someone to sit and read a book, play hide and seek, host a club meeting, or stage a free play has little obvious monetary value.

Whatever amenities are provided will be carefully balanced against direct extra spending they bring in, instead of abstract civic improvement.

Not an answer to your question exactly, but to the whole premise: Gruen transfer [0]. We have a great TV show by that name here in Australia that deconstructs advertising.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer

I'm in eastern Canada and I agree with your weather statement. With 100km/h winds, -25C and 1m of snow it's not worth going out. I wish we had a subway system here and underground shops.

Montreal and Toronto have huge indoor shopping areas connected by subway, I suppose technically they are malls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_(Toronto)

Similarly, and while I don't have links on hand, Japan (at least Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo) have major shopping centers right in major train stations. The train station itself seems to be a destination.

There are gyms (generally Konami health clubs), food and shopping, and gardens on the rooftop.

In Osaka it seemed like every available square meter was converted to retail space. Shopping arcades, train station shops, underground causeways lined with shops, traditional malls. The back alleys have back alleys, and they're all lined with shops -- often specialty shops. I found one shop devoted to display cases for otaku to show off their model collection. Another shop specialized in LCD signs you could use in the storefront for your shop. It was NUTS.

And yeah, the first time I saw a Konami gym my mind boggled. Is this how Snake stays in such good shape? Use promo code Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start and get a 30-day free membership!

So, growing up in the midwest, there is a museum dedicated to the area. It's on Main Street in the biggest town in the area. It's basement, which is now just used for storage, was part of an entire underground Main Street. You can still see the storefronts with the big windows and such down there. Apparently it stretched along most of downtown, mirroring the above.

This sounds fascinating - where is this, if you don't mind me asking?

Sounds a lot like Underground Atlanta - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Atlanta

Aberdeen, South Dakota. The Dacotah Prairie Museum. http://brown.sd.us/dacotah-prairie-museum/home

Unfortunately they don't have much in the way of documentation about it. I might have to bug them about it when I go home for the holidays.

And about 300km to the north of my location in Gaspe today winds were 132km/h (82mph).

North Americans are too soft.

I live in Toronto and it's wonderful to have nice streets that you can walk and bike on, even at ±30C.

Peach Brother! ;)

I used to be much more resilient but now would prefer a warmer climate, bring on global warming!

As my brother-in-law in Maine says, "There's no bad weather, just bad clothing."

I thought Toronto was part of North America...

Also, doesn't Montreal have the Underground City specifically for staying out of the cold in the winter?

Toronto also has a large underground section downtown.

Northern Americans?

Yes and many people here, especially outside of the downtown / in the GTA, act like being outside for an hour is unbearable and that suburbs and cars are the only fix. They aren't.

He or she is probably not North American.

Some weather can be worked around though. Some of Denver's more popular shopping areas are outdoor type malls. You just have to design them with the weather in mind with things like fire pits and heaters to use in the winter.

Denver gets very little precipitation so rain is something that generally is not an issue though.

In Northern Italy - where the weather can be bad, if not ugly - they developed the Portico, where the buildings overhang the sidewalks and provide protection from rain and wind (see http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I00007AaJoUp4oKU/s/750...)

Sure, they don't completely isolate humans from weather conditions but these solutions significantly improve the livability and prolonged usability of an urbanization, without burning bathtubs of gasoline to keep running.

Humans are not obliged to colonize every single corner of the planet...

To be fair, other places work with this issue. Ljubljana gets plenty cold and has a lovely downtown - one of the prettiest I know. However, it has very little parking (part of its appeal), meaning it would be illegal to build it in the US.

I think you could apply the same thing to an indoor area. Make it feel like a truly public place, with comfortable seating areas, buskers, pretty things to look at, more local products and less bland chains, and less pressure to buy stuff.

Malls are a great place to walk (especially for toddlers and the elderly) in the winter time!

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