Why US Malls Are Dying (and Why European Malls Aren't)
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Back in the year 2000, someone created the Deadmalls.com website that was notable enough to get a Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadmalls.com
And it turns out there was a book published in 2002:
"Greyfields into Goldfields: Dead Malls become Living Neighborhoods"
https://www.amazon.com/Greyfields-into-Goldfields-become-Nei...
...just a few random older articles from DDG:
From 2000: "Retail Darwinism Puts Old Malls in Jeopardy"
"The fully enclosed shopping mall, that island of boxy chain stores and lost apostrophes in a sea of asphalt, was not born in California. But this seems to be the place where people are digging its grave, at least in its present form."
https://web.archive.org/web/20150527125625/https://www.nytim...
From 2001: "Dying shopping malls reborn as old-fashioned downtowns"
https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2001-12-12/article...
From 2003: "Malls: Death of an American icon"
https://web.archive.org/web/20030707142032/https://money.cnn...
Cory Doctorow was talking about dead malls in 2003:
https://boingboing.net/2003/04/19/dead-mall-contest-re.html
From 1998: "Enclosed malls losing luster as well as tenants"
"Mintz thinks the vacancies signal a deeper problem -- that malls are outdated and out of touch with the needs of today's shoppers."
https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/1998/02/09/st...
From 2018: "America’s malls are dying. Owners are hoping virtual reality and fitness centers will save them"
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-malls-revival-2018091...
Of course there are a plethora of recent articles as well:
https://duckduckgo.com/?va=v&t=ha&q=%22Malls+are+dying%22&ia...