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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

It's funny you say that because in Los Angeles, mall culture is MASSIVE. Malls aren't stagnant. They are high-end and a lot of fun. Kids go there to hang out and adults go there to shop. I love it and it's sad it didn't take in other areas.

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You find it sad because you have never experienced the beauty of a society without malls. With small little local shops instead of the big corporations and high street brands that all look the same. Europeans have. But it is being destroyed by the malls.

Walk the Streets of Stockholm and you will find the same franchise/chain stores on every block.

In fact, many are quite happy to visit the “Mall of Scandinavia”

And many / most smaller towns only have chains.

That Euro charm that so many romanticize is not evenly distributed.

I see delivery vans in my street every day. As you say the only physical shopping people still want to do is in the upmarket malls.

I'm not trying to be snarky but plenty of small businesses open in our local malls. A mall is just a venue where businesses can exist.

Los Angeles probably has the most non-chain businesses in any of the cities I've lived in.

> I love it and it's sad it didn't take in other areas.

It did take for a long time in other areas. (Long = approximately the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.) But visits to malls across the US have been declining for some time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retail_apocalypse (Not mall-specific.)

Yeah, I guess I meant why didn't it stay. Was it too much expansion or is the culture in Los Angeles just different?

Maybe it's simply because among the millions and millions of LA residents there are enough people who still like malls. Other areas might not be able to compensate the general loss of interest.

They're definitely still thriving in bigger cities. It's the smaller ones like mine (~100k) where the business is no longer viable.

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