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Comment by JimA | Hacker News Reader

I read the title and had a vision of a "community" built in a mail - where you would walk out of your apartment and be able to visit your local coffee bar, diner, park, grocery store, etc all within a mall. That sounded fabulous and something I would be interested in. The article left me disappointed, not much happening along those lines.

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If that sounds fabulous, you would like watching Waydowntown, about a group of young professionals who make a wager on who can live inside the connected mall+office+apartment complex without going outside the longest.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/

Thanks for this. I saw this years ago on late night cable and never could remember the name of the movie.

> where you would walk out of your apartment and be able to visit your local coffee bar, diner, park, grocery store, etc

You mean, like, a normal city?

Cities are a lot less accessible than malls, and typically maintained more poorly.

American cities certainly are.

This doesn’t have to be true. Source: europe.

I was just walking through a deadish mall in my city a couple days ago thinking how awesome if they had done that instead of the offices they put on the upper floors.

I know there is a small mall in Providence RI that does this (more like a strip mall if I remember correctly).

I also believe there are condos above one of the malls here in Boston but I am not entirely sure if they have their own entrance or if they have direct access to the mall.

Might be some zoning restrictions on being able to put residential in. But adding offices is easy, as it's still commercial. Which isn't to say that they couldn't try to get it rezoned, but it's more difficult.

Zoning in the United States is out of control in most suburban-and -up places. Too restrictive. It drives a lot of our ills (megacommuting, unaffordable housing, sprawl, etc) and needs to be liberalized. Like sure, I get it, don't put a tire burning yard in the middle of a playground. But surely there's a way to avoid such outcomes without stifling all land use innovation and freedom across the board.

In our town, a local abandoned mall was torn down and renovated into a strip mall situation. As part of the deal negotiated with the city, the parking lot in back was to be used for apartments. Probably to help with revenue and to support the shops. This probably was an exception to zoning. No other apartments exist anywhere near there.

The residents were so upset they initiated a recall of council members and revoked the apartment portion of the deal (after the company had already built the mall).

> I know there is a small mall in Providence RI that does this

It's not just any small mall -- it's literally the first/oldest indoor shopping mall in the US! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Arcade

Sadly it didn't seem very lively the time I visited last year. Nice architecture and a few cool stores though!

see, e.g., Roppongi Hills. I lived there for a year when I was based in Tokyo. It is very much as you describe; there are several residential buildings within a mixed-use complex that includes a large office tower, a bunch of retail, restaurants, a small supermarket, a hotel, a movie theater etc.

https://www.roppongihills.com/en/

I actually lived in something sort of like that for about 8 months. I lived in a high-rise apartment building that was attached to a 2-level mall of mostly Asian shops. There was a fob-protected door between the mall and the lobby of the high-rise. It was great when you needed to quickly run out to get some ingredient (from the Chinese grocery store) or hankered for a pork bun or custard cup (from the Chinese bakery) or wanted to grab lunch at a food court (of mostly, but not entirely, Asian food vendors).

Not quite the same as stepping out of your apartment into a mall, but close.

I wasn't super thrilled with the high-rise itself (tenants were very noisy), but I quite like that aspect of it.

We've got some malls around where I live (suburban) that did actually build multi-story apartments/condo towers into the design of the mall where the residents can walk right into the mall.

It's an odd thing in the suburbs, someone has to really value the mall, because the units can be quite expensive compared to single family units in town, and there's certainly more financial risk in owning a unit attached to the mall if the mall starts to fail.

That’s nearly the model of the Americana development in the LA area. An outdoor mall modeled to look like a dense, walkable city (complete with trolley car!) with apartments on top. No grocery store though, and priced at 4K+/month

I believe that is how malls were originally envisioned. In Naples I believe there is a neighbourhood like that. In Toronto, at the Atrium on Bay, I believe there are apartments.

That does sounds great. Though I'd imagine trying to retro fit plumbing for each apartment would be a nightmare

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