Why US Malls Are Dying (And Why European Malls Aren't)
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- Опубліковано 10 чер 2023
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US malls are more dead than the Metaverse.
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Fortepan / Urbán Tamás
Fortepan / Gábor Viktor
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US infrastructure is good for ONE thing: shooting zombie movies, because the buildings are so isolated they can be easily transformed into fortresses.
As an Australian, I was shocked when I discovered American malls don’t have supermarkets in them. I think that’s been a big part of keeping Australian malls relevant, they have all the day-to-day stuff that keeps you going there regularly
As a European I often stop by the mall simply because I pass through the era, something I don’t think happens in the us
There's another thing European malls do that American ones don't. They keep their parking lots underground, neatly stacked under the building, with elevators for easy access.
Malls are dying, but videos about abandoned malls are thriving. So we are heading in the right direction!
I wonder why our parking lots with one building in the middle of it aren’t doing as well as we had hoped.
I remember going to America for a month living with an American family. They wanted to take us to the mall, which i thought was great. Really wanted to see an American mall. Just so turns out it was an hour drive away, which for them was so normal they didn't even think to mention it.
US malls were never even meant to be this way in the first place. The founder of the mall, Victor Gruen, actually denounced malls as abominations of his original intent: they were supposed to be places to shop, live, with amenities and housing and all sorts of stuff (like a 15-minute/accessible little cityspace). But they ended up as horrible, lifeless, commerce-only spaces surrounded by thick motes of parking lots that took 10 minutes to walk across.
I went to America earlier this year, and what struck me about the mall was that it was basically all just clothes. There was like, one gamestop, and a small overpriced food court. No bookshops, no actual electronics shop, nothing else but clothes and accessories. I had to walk most of an hour to get there, too.
I honestly appreciate how much this man cares about the infrastructure of a country that he does not inhabit. I wish more people did.
Reason number three is so important. As someone who lives in Japan, online shopping can't compete with how quickly I can be at a physical shop and acquire something I need. I usually reserve online shopping for the things I want more choice for, things that are too big to carry home, or things that are not easily acquired somewhere near me. The list of things that fall into these categories is not very long.
There is a reason for that. European Cities have in most case a City Center. If you go to an unknown city, you'll always go to the city center and start there. So the malls were placed as close as possible to the city center to catch walk by peoples and tourists. They benefits from culture areas, restaurants, public transports, several activities etc. Sometimes there are also Malls outside in the middle of nowhere an they struggle actually with the same problems as the US malls.
As someone who shopped at MetroCenter in Phoenix in the late 80's, I can attest to the fact that it is indeed in the middle of nowhere, yet also completely surrounded by the city with likely tens of thousands of people living within a small radius. The mall is fully surrounded by its own massive parking lot, several stroads, a large freeway, and a couple blocks of satellite businesses with their own large parking lots. It is a really good example of poor urban design in the U.S., where things may be relatively close to you, but are still somehow only accessible by car.
As an American who recently lived in Europe, I can confirm that many times visiting cities in Germany, I wandered into malls by complete chance/accident. In Dresden it happened multiple times - they were just in a convenient spot between our hostel and restaurants and the main city center. Even though in my hometown the main mall isn't dying, it's stands so alone that you have to make a conscious effort to go there, and I rarely would go to it except when hanging out with friends.
The US malls stopped having stores that were of benefit to preople shopping; real restaurants with quiet spots, drugstores, dime stores, bookstores, etc. Great decor with plants, places to sit, variety, nursery, variety, variety. It's all the same large stores inside a large building. You get exhausted just trying to find a piece of clothing.
I've noticed that malls in tourist-centric areas are much more popular in the US than normal malls, which is obviously because tourists go there, but I think it's also because those malls have to be designed for people without cars and be close to the center of attention, making them generally much more pedestrian friendly and accessible. They can't be designed with cars in mind.
An interesting thing in my city (Odesa, Ukraine): there IS a mall in the suburbs. The public transport here was almost non-existent, because, well, this is a suburb and almost everyone owns a car (this started to change because of new developments in this area, but we are talking about the situation 15-20 years ago). What this mall decided to do was to introduce free buses that will take you to and from the mall, and this was an absolute killer. People absolutely love this and this mall is ALWAYS full with people despite it being in the middle of nowhere. And I guess that the mall owners benefit from this, because the price of these buses is covered by the sheer amount of people they get into this mall.
Here in Australia - we have sort of a mix of both European and American Malls, where the malls in more wealthy areas well connected by public transit are thriving and full of people, where as the ones that are fully motor oriented and in less wealthy areas are mostly dead. It's quite an interesting dichotomy and shows how segregated Australian cities are even if people don't notice it.
As an American laying in my Airbnb in Copenhagen I can't agree with you more. I was a planning commissioner in my city for nine years and all bad projects can most often be explained by bad urban planning and policies. How I long for the US to wake up and realize we don't know it all and that there are so many good examples of better ideas out there in the world.
As a Colombian, I always wondered why the hell american malls dind't have multilevel subterranean or building-style parking lots. Saves a lot of space, so malls can be built in smaller spaces inside the city, instead of outside it on a barren terrarin..... also makes it feel A LOT less lifeless if it's sourrounded by buldings, parks or whatever colorful, and distances are way shorter both to go there, and to walk inside it. Even we in the "third subworld" have them. Time to implement urban planning instead of letting megarich "investors" decide they want to make a huge 2-floor mall with an even more huge open air parking lot because it's cheaper to build. You got the money and the skills to do it.