Malls Aren't Dying, They're Thriving | Hacker News Reader

Malls Aren't Dying, They're Thriving

newgeography.com

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The traditional closed-air mall is in fact dying, in most locales across the country. The transition to online shopping reduces the need for trips to the big box "anchor" stores, and as a result the smaller stores receive less foot traffic walking by, and in time are forced to close.

This is very similar to how many American downtowns suffered in the 1970s when malls themselves were rising in popularity. Big box stores, seeking lower rents and closer quarters to one another (captive pocketbooks!), re-located to the more affordable fringes of town. As cities sprawled and families piled in their cars for shopping trips, independent locally-owned stores in medium-sized urban downtowns went out of business when the "anchor" stores packed up and moved to indoor malls. This lead to economic stagnation in the former "hearts" of small American cities, as the economic drivers moved from the geographic urban centers to further into the suburban sprawl.

Quite a fascinating cycle.

Large city center malls don't suffer the same fate, since they don't rely on the draw of a few anchor stores, and have a higher percentage of out of town visitors.

What you are seeing emerge instead in most of suburban America is a new kind of open air, "commons" type of shopping destination, which provides a uniquely different experience than either a closed-air mall or online shopping can afford.

Minneapolis native, and frequent patron of the Mall of America in a past life, here. How are you quantifying "dying"? I was back in Minneapolis in April and the mall was just as crowded as I remember it. We didn't really do any shopping (because Amazon Prime), but we sure spent a lot of money at a great restaurant, a few rides in that Nickelodeon thing[1], and more at the Sea Life aquarium [2]. We hung around a bit more to eat ice cream and watch the Twins game in the rotunda on the giant, ~2 story screen.

All in all, it was a fun day and it had nothing to do with shopping. So I guess my point is that you might be able to show me that online is eating brick and mortar shopping stores, but that doesn't seem to be stopping folks from going to the MoA or from building an expansion[3]. Seems that larger malls are transitioning into tourist attractions, though MoA probably always was. Honestly I would never drive to the suburbs to an open air "commons" (because Amazon Prime). But I certainly would drive to MoA to check out the Apple Watch, see the sharks, and eat a really nice dinner.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_Universe [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Life_Minnesota_Aquarium [3] http://www.startribune.com/ground-broken-on-325-million-mall...

I was speaking to the more common 70-100 storefront mall in a typical 20 - 50,000 resident town across America.

I don't doubt you at all - but I do think MoA is certainly an anomaly, as it's almost an amusement park in terms of attractions and draw. The shift towards entertainment "destinations" is certainly interesting, but again speaks to the fall of walk-in retail centers. As you say, most of your enjoyment came from actions far removed from the traditional shopping experience most of us probably grew up with at the mall.

Anecdotally, I have to agree with the post above. Been to dozens of malls in the past couple years, and they do in fact seem to be thriving.

Perhaps the indoor mall is more preferred in the northeast where I've explored most, as the cold winters and humid summers make it a preferable destination.

Then again, outdoor Santana row clones are also popping up everywhere, both in the northeast and in more temperate locales. Personally I think they're all doing quite well.

From my purely anedotal evidence, it's both. I've spent the last 10 years in the American West and Mid-West. There are plenty of malls that are literally being torn down, are half-empty, or have low-prestige businesses (exercise and martial arts, thrift shops, even museums). At the same time, some other malls are booming, fuller than I ever remember them being as a youth.

I don't know exactly what marks or causes the split, but it's very much there to my eyes.

In the UK, mega-malls are doing great whereas small ones are faltering.

I think it's because shopping is now an experience rather than a necessity: people go to mega-malls to eat out, see a movie, and have a look at shops where they may or may not actually buy anything. Large chains can then use their megamall-based shops as showrooms/customer-care contact point/"prestige" destinations. You only need one or two per city, of course, so they close smaller shops elsewhere which acted as anchors in smaller malls or retail parks.

eCommerce is increasingly centralising retail in the way IT centralised distribution 20 years ago. This is also why a lot of UK small towns are suffering (they are, in the end, primitive shopping malls).

Back in Wichita Kansas Town East and West malls have been in decline (the latter has been hit the hardest over the years) now that shopping centers in areas like 21st Street North and Maize have opened. It doesn't seem to be a uniform pattern across the country that malls are categorically dying, but that malls in towns like Wichita are basically dead or dying due to their location (Town East and West are located far away from the newest suburbs where as the shopping center I mentioned is less than a mile away from most of the subdivisions).

> The traditional closed-air mall is in fact dying, in most locales across the country.

I'm seeing the exact opposite.

> The transition to online shopping reduces the need for trips to the big box "anchor" stores

Most of the malls in this area have transitioned to entertainment destinations. Huge movie theaters, the stores are more showroom ... Tesla, Perch, Apple, etc., tons of restaurants.

They're building a new mall nearby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream_Meadowlands

Apparently the cost is 3.5 billion? The new mall will have an ice rink, amusement park, water park, concert hall, movie theater, and an indoor 12-story ski slope for skiing, snowboarding and tubing.

Does that sound like something that's dying?

> The new mall will have an ice rink, amusement park, water park, concert hall, movie theater, and an indoor 12-story ski slope for skiing, snowboarding and tubing.

> Does that sound like something that's dying?

Yeah, it does. It's saying "we can't exist as just a shopping center any more, so we've got to become an all-in-one entertainment destination instead." Which, I'm sure will be successful, but not every city can support a $3.5 billion complex like that, and it doesn't bode well for the thousands of existing locations which are just plain shopping malls.

Malls as all in one entertainment centers were the norm most of the existence of malls; as well as shopping they usually include dining, included arcades when those were a viable business, very often movie theaters, and often some other, usually child/family-focused, entertainment venue. If anything, they've narrowed in focus from the latter 1990s to today -- arcades mostly gone, diversity of shopping reduced to mostly clothing stores, etc. -- broadening the focus returns malls to the kind of destination that they've been four most of their history.

>Yeah, it does. It's saying "we can't exist as just a shopping center any more, so we've got to become an all-in-one entertainment destination instead."

Not really. If it was dying it wouldn't get investments to extra structures and entertainment. Why put your new attractions to a dying complex?

It's only if it already does well that it can expand like that.

"Does that sound like something that's dying?"

Yes, plenty of malls try the entertainment idea before failing, the issue is entertainment takes far longer than a store. So you end up far lower foot traffic levels which kills off the nitch stores that pay the most rent per squre foot. Without those high rent store the mall can't afford enough matence to keep the place pristeen which ends up driving away the big spenders starting the final death spiral.

In the end it's simple math, middle class incomes have been stagnate for more than a generation and people are doing far more online retail which means less leftover for malls.

Well, the Xanadu complex has been an interesting destination / planning story since the beginning. But that's also in a pretty unique area and, as you mentioned, is a far cry from what most small-town malls across America can offer (or afford to). The original draw at the Xanadu complex was an indoor ski ramp, if I remember. And, to take a stab at the price you mention, I recall a certain Atlantic City casino with a similar price tag that was opened a few years back, and closed very shortly after it opened.

You'd be correct for the ski ramp, and I was interested in it be used of the proposed indoor skydiving tunnel. The casino you are referring to in Atlantic City was Revel, which did indeed close.

There's a very interesting 99% Invisible episode about the move to outdoor malls, and the origins of malls themselves. I would definitely recommend a listen.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-effect/

I have seen some of the open air varieties but enclosed malls don't seem to be fading anywhere where there is a good economy. I have seen pictures of a few closed ones but there usually are strip malls and similar gone as well as the whole area is suffering from depression.

As for the open air commons style, again only where there was money to support stores but if recent remodels of some local streets is any indications the businesses who attracted attention in the first place usually get driven out as the costs go up as after the "fixing it up" suddenly the tax base goes up or if renting their rent becomes too high.

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Exposing your SQL queries in an exception on a public-facing website does not seem like a best practice.

Their file paths too. Looks like they're running Drupal by the tables.

EDIT: Yup, Drupal 5.7 seemingly (old, likely security issues). http://www.newgeography.com/CHANGELOG.txt

From a UX POV, probably not.

If this is a security complaint, well, its less exposed information (a strict subset) than if your app was open source, so I don't see it as particularly a problem.

Actually it's not a subset. Even if the app is open source, what you gain from this error is: username, installation path, resource limits. All of those add something you don't know from the code itself. All can be useful when trying (respectively) injections / bruteforce auth, path traversal / secrets access, denial of service.

Also line numbers can help you identify the deployed version.

Also optional table prefixes which are deployment-specific.

You're right, I was wrong; leaving the grandparent post just for context for your response, otherwise I'd delete it.

Information leakage is considered a security vulnerability. https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Information_Leakage

The author, Joel Kotkin, definitely has a preconceived notion about development, suburbia, and malls. (That being, he is a booster for all three, for example, see http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/30/kotkin_on_sub...)

I mention this ad hominem tidbit because he always presents himself as a neutral observer, who happens to have brought a counterintuitive fact to light. It's tiresome.

I can think of half-a-dozen closed air malls within 30 minutes of each other where I live. Some of them are absolutely thriving, packed full of shoppers pretty much all day and on a race to expand space and amenities with the growing crowds.

Others are near-dead ghost towns with something like 50% occupancy and entire wings blocked off because of a homeless/drug addict/gang problem.

Most of the open-air "town center" style malls around me are also packed to the gills at all times. It's actually unpleasant to shop at them because they're so crowded, but they usually mix in outlet stores with regular stores and draw huge tourist crowds.

I'm not sure what the trend is, not all that long ago I would say they're definitely - most certainly dying. But then one of the near-dead malls near me just changed hands, is undergoing major renovation and the numbers of stores and shoppers is growing.

I think people like the social aspect of shopping, the walking around and browsing, touching things, trying them on. My wife orders lots of clothes on-line, but the smart stores let her return non-fitting clothes in-store, where she'll also check out what they're offering, try some things on and then buy more -- she's not the only one.

There's a pretty close parallel here with American libraries. Conventional libraries suffered in the transition to online information/book sources. But, they've become a great community gathering place, especially for kids. I've seen evidence that malls are headed this direction with the increasing size of their indoor play areas, etc.

The stores can come and go, but I think the folks running the mall properties will figure out what to do to stay a viable destination for large numbers of people.

I agree. The local libraries around me have been undergoing a steady transformation into resource-rich study centers for school-aged kids to college kids. On-line degree programs also seem to attract loads of people looking for quiet places with reference sections to study.

My county system also has a robust e-book, book-on-tape on-line check-out system, community activities (kids Minecraft club, adult retrogaming Saturdays, book club guest speakers, puppet shows, etc.) The library system in my county is actually growing due to so many people using them. They've become true community centers and I personally find it a beautiful thing.

I pity the poor people who simply want dead tree books to read.

Awesome! goes to her local mall... Oh wait. Its dying and has quite literally two businesses left in it. It's the only mall within an hour from where I live.

The mall at the last place I lived closed down a couple years ago, also due to lack of business.

I know my experience is of a very small sample...

The failure of your local mall doesn't extend to the concept of "malls are dying". As the article says:

To suggest malls are dead based on failure in failed places would be like suggesting that the manifest shortcomings of Baltimore or Buffalo means urban centers are not doing well. Like cities, not all malls are alike.

Anyone have a mirror?

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