In the middle of the tale of revenge that is A snail story for Black Friday/Buy Nothing Day, I made the following bittersweet observation.
While many malls are in trouble or have closed, such as the Northland Mall next to where I teach, the Somerset Collection is still thriving. One of these days, it will close, but not any time soon.
Vox noticed the wave of shopping mall failures in What America’s shopping mall decline means for social space.
The mall was America’s third place — for better or for worse.
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Our lives are lived in 1 of 3 places, the home, the workplace and the “third place,” which is anywhere outside of those two.
Toward the end of the 20th century, the regional shopping mall had become that third place, the hang-out spot in suburban America. This was largely by design — an immigrant architect created the first mall in the vision that it would be a community gathering place.
The plan didn’t work out as he intended. While malls did take off, they more often than not couldn’t quite catch on as ideal “third places.” But with an estimated 25% of shopping malls expected to close in the next five years, there’s an opportunity to re-examine where Americans spend their time and what could be the next iteration of the third place.
Oh, shiny! Vox used clips from at least one of the two documentaries themselves recycled in The End of Suburbia. I’d ask at the video if that’s where they found those segments, but the comments section to the video has been overrun with trolls. So much for chasing that shiny object.
More seriously, malls did not make ideal “third spaces” because they did not exhibit all eight characteristics. The Steampunk fans ejected from San Diego area mall four years ago found that out the hard way. They ran afoul of rules intended to keep gang members from frequenting the mall and scaring away shoppers. As the KPBS article I quoted pointed out, “Malls are private property. They have the right to determine who shops there.” That means you!
Vox isn’t the only YouTube creator to notice the decline of malls. This is Dan Bell has an ongoing Dead Mall Series on the subject. Here is the installment posted nearly simultaneously with Vox’s video: DEAD MALL SERIES : Palm Trees and Broken Dreams : West Oaks Mall : Ocoee, Florida.
I admit I find a certain macabre fascination to the series, which is on-topic for this blog. I might return to it, as Bell has a video of two declining malls in Flint, Michigan, and another of an abandoned K-Mart. That reminds me; K-Mart is closing stores and Toys R Us has just gone out of business. Those are definitely topics for another day.
Originally posted as Vox on America’s dying malls as failed third spaces at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News.
Today’s music is Toto- Africa (playing in an empty shopping centre).
no I’m not gonna tip Toto.
I’d like “Overproduced 80s Bands” for $1000 please, Alex.
Would you tip its parody, Moonbeam City – I Kiss the Reef in Aquatica?
Or do I need to pull out Moon Unit Zappa singing Valley Girl?
Interesting.
Disclaimer; I have not been inside a `mall’ in at least 5 years, and it’s probably more like 10. We have one not more than a mile away. We used to go there all the time, then we stopped.
IMO the VOX video emphasizes `third space’ too much, particularly when it comes to retail spaces. IMO no retail space is going to be a reliable third space, and certainly not a mall. They are too artificial, too….fake. Too many fluorescent lights. Compare a mall book store to the new book stores, that are now in mostly in what we in Cali call `strip malls’, meaning open air shopping centers, with all the stores lines in a strip. There the book store has a very large space, where they have a coffee/muffin shop, and plenty of soft chairs or couches, and where you are encouraged to browse, even sit and read a book you have intention of buying. The building is purpose build, with the front solid windows, and with high ceilings, all to bring in natural light, with the fluorescent lights many feet up. A mall book store is cramped, with narrow rows, and few chairs, which are usually not comfortable. This is understandable from an economic perspective, because in a mall you need to use every square foot for sales, because the rents per square foot are exorbitant. You are also not encouraged to loiter, with such rents, it’s buy or move on. Malls really don’t encourage loitering. The strip mall option better fit the image of shopping that IMO appeals best to American culture….that of walking down a city/town Main Street and going in and out of stores, always returning to the open air. That fits the image that Americans have of themselves…..think of how that is replicated in our `play’ areas, like Disneyland’s Main Street. Malls also are difficult to `dash and buy’ from. Hard to get into, hard to get what you want.
I think creative mall owners now realize this. Our local mall is undergoing a massive multi year remodel, in which the facade is being removed, and replaced with stores facing out, store fronts. I say `stores’, but mainly it’s not normal retail spaces…it’s theaters, restaurants, night clubs, in other words…third spaces.
I see no significant problem with the decline of malls. Their hey day lasted what, 25 years? And that hey day was about 1975-2000. About. It was an experiment that had moderate success, and is now being adapted. That has happened to retail spaces forever.
An interesting subject would be that 1975-2000 era, and why malls were so appealing to Americans. Believe it or not…..cellular phones probably play a roll in the decline.
BTW, our two strip malls, both within a mile, are thriving. There is no retail `apocalypse’. It’s more of a retrenchment, a common occurrence in retail spaces, where they are always adapting to what the public wants. That’s how is should be.
Disclaimer #2…I live in Southern California, where the weather is almost always good. We are not an area that needs to hide from humidity.
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edit….I mean a book you have NO intention of buying. It’s important, because at our local Barnes and Noble they encourage you to sit, read little to see if you like it, and maybe have cup of coffee.
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“I live in Southern California, where the weather is almost always good. We are not an area that needs to hide from humidity.”
Or excessive heat or the snows of winter, either. I moved from Southern California to Michigan 29 years ago, so I’m quite aware of the differences in climate and the appeal of an enclosed mall where I live now. That written, when Arborland Mall in Ann Arbor got rid of the enclosure and turned into an outdoor big box mall, it really increased activity at the location, so protection from weather isn’t everything, even in Michigan.
The retail apocalypse isn’t hitting California like most of the country, but part of that is that California is doing quite well economically. Even so, we do have dead malls around here (e.g. the Hawthorne Mall) and there are a number that are visibly sick. Strip malls are even worse.
Is the refurbishing mall you are referring to the Laguna Hills Mall? It’s doing an inside – to – outside conversion and (sort of) converting to mixed use. I was really excited about the mixed use conversion until I found out it was only a few hundred apartments – not much for the size of the site.
lots of stuff to think about here.
to a great extent the growth of suburban malls was matched by the decline of downtown shopping districts, which was rarely good for the cities, causing the decline of their previously functioning “third spaces”.
Isn’t the decline of shopping malls part of the whole problem of brick-and-mortar retail?
“[T]he growth of suburban malls was matched by the decline of downtown shopping districts” — That’s a topic touched on in The End of Suburbia, a film I used to show to my students. I asked them “What effect did the rise of suburbia have on cities?” The answer was that cities were absolutely gutted as their functions, especially retail, were poured out (James Howard Kunstler says “decanted”) onto the suburbs.
“Isn’t the decline of shopping malls part of the whole problem of brick-and-mortar retail?” Yes, it is. I’ll have more to say about that in future installments of this series.
Good post.
Question: what do you seek in “third places”? I don’t have a handy answer to that question, but exploring it might be revealing.
What I seek in a “third place” is summarized in the term’s Wikipedia article.
Out of both lists, the important to me is “a home away from home.” I found that particularly important when I was single and especially so when I was living alone. Those places also served food and the owner of the last place I frequented called it “a living room with cash registers.” I agree; that’s what it was.
I’ve seen hidden comments before, but not deleted ones. As Jack Sparrow would say, “That’s interesting, that’s very interesting.”