<story><title>Are Malls Over?</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/are-malls-over.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tsunamifury</author><text>Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not.  Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries.&lt;p&gt;What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores.&lt;p&gt;People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer.&lt;p&gt;However tacitly this article is pointing to a possible larger problem in the Midwest where cold weather, and permanently depressed economy and a talent drain is leaving them without the tools to build interesting gathering places. This is a far larger and sadder issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flexie</author><text>In Europe, malls are still constructed in many places and they have the advantage of being built a few decades after many of the US malls.&lt;p&gt;Where I live summers are a bit too warm and winters a bit too cold to make outdoor shopping joyful. Also, streets are noisy and full of aggressive drivers and the sidewalks are full of holes and broken tiles. So in the last few years this 1.5M population city has seen the construction of 10 shopping malls, most of which are actually really nice &amp;quot;gathering places&amp;quot; as you put it and most of which seem to thrive.&lt;p&gt;One advantage from most of the US malls that I have been to is that cars are parked under the malls, not around them, that most of the malls are built near subway or tram stops and that they somehow fit nicely into the surrounding architecture.&lt;p&gt;Often the malls are built in the city center and usually in a very nice quality. Usually the malls have one major supermarket chain in the basement that acts as an anchor store and usually they have a cinema and a food court in the top floor that offers not just the usual fast food but often also some decent food.&lt;p&gt;I really enjoy shopping in a mall and until someone fixes the problem of waiting and paying for delivery I don&amp;#x27;t see online shopping making malls obsolete.</text></comment>
<story><title>Are Malls Over?</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/are-malls-over.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tsunamifury</author><text>Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not.  Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries.&lt;p&gt;What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores.&lt;p&gt;People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer.&lt;p&gt;However tacitly this article is pointing to a possible larger problem in the Midwest where cold weather, and permanently depressed economy and a talent drain is leaving them without the tools to build interesting gathering places. This is a far larger and sadder issue.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jimmaswell</author><text>Brutalist? Don&amp;#x27;t you think that&amp;#x27;s a little hyperbolic? Every mall I&amp;#x27;ve witnessed has had interior and exterior design far from brutalist. Pretty nice-looking, really.&lt;p&gt;A popular one around here actually has a large skylight spanning most of the middle of the roof.&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of good reasons to prefer an indoor place. The weather&amp;#x27;s often not comfortable outside. It&amp;#x27;s only really perfectly comfortable for a time throughout the year that sums to maybe a few months over here. Maybe you&amp;#x27;re used to some place where it&amp;#x27;s the perfect weather all year?&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Do they really want all that, or do they just want some place with a bunch of stores and maybe a movie theater and food court, in a nice indoor climate-controlled environment and some light music in the background?&lt;p&gt;You just admitted in your last paragraph that the weather in that place makes an outdoor gathering less desirable.</text></comment>