• qooqie@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    They keep saying we’re doing wonderful and coming out of it, but I hit up my big local mall recently and holy shit. You can really tell when we’re heading towards the shitter by looking at your mall. I’m not in a small town by any means and half the stores were closed at it. I think it’ll get worse and worse and worse until maybe next year this time. And then maybe we’ll start pulling out of this recession, but I’m not optimistic that we’re in a recession, I’m thinking this is normal now

    • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Dying malls are a sign of bad urban planning, not of a shrinking economy. Malls in America have been closing down for probably decades now while there are still new ones opening in European cities.

      • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
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        11 months ago

        Malls in the US were killed by the Internet. The ones that are still around are a macabre husk of what shopping malls once were here. There’s a Spencer’s, but no arcade. There’s an Orange Julius, but no record store. Dillard’s and Macy’s are there, but Sears is long dead. Half of the closest one to me is a giant police station.

    • squiblet@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Malls aren’t very good economic indicators. They been dying for years regardless of the economic conditions - checkout /r/deadmalls on reddit. Partly due to tastes of consumers, who got tired of walking half a mile to get to a store, and partly due to online commerce.

      • Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        I’ve heard that the regulatory environment had a big impact on some places. Something like there were a bunch of subsidies/incentives to invest in the real estate aspect of malls. When those incentives dried up, the increased operating costs got passed on to tenants, some of which couldn’t afford the increase. Closing shops make the mall less attractive for customers, which reduces sales at the remaining shops, some of which end up closing down, and the whole thing spirals into the situation we have now.

        • squiblet@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          I wouldn’t be surprised if artificial incentives played a role. It’s also worth noting that in general, malls were built and flourished at the expense of downtown shopping areas, and many cities had hollowed out, dead commercial cores by the era when malls were going strong.

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Malls have been dead for half my lifetime lol.

      There’s a reason nearly all of them have been converted to city resources centers.