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The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

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Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#81

Post by bobthepanda »

jhbadger wrote: post #55
enriquto wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who wants to drive downtown to get shoes or a tie? I had a hard time understanding the meaning of this sentence, and its context. The idea of "driving downtown to go shopping" is backwards to me. You live downtown, and walk a few meters to the shop. Then I realized that you may be from the USA, where your cities seem to be turned inside out. You are indeed a funny country.

People do live downtown in US cities, but at least since the 1990s when that became popular again after city crime rates fell (for reasons which are still being debated today), these housing options (generally condominiums and rowhouses) tend to be very expensive compared to living in the suburbs. So only the upper middle class/upper class can afford it. It's not that unlike the situation in other countries. Living i…

Meh, the US is still kind of odd. European cities tend to be wealthy in the center and less wealthy as you go out.

US cities, at least the ones where downtown has turned around, have a donut-shaped wealth distribution; rich downtown, blighted inner-city and inner-ring, outer wealthy suburbs.

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#82

Post by bobthepanda »

lazerpants wrote: post #74
cycomanic wrote: post #44

I think this is a very US perspective. In the town where I grew up in Germany they created a pedestrian zone downtown when I was a teenager. There was a lot of protests from businesses saying that people would drive to malls in the outskirts because they can't drive to the shops anymore. The exact opposite happened, if you look at the city centre it's busy every day and absolutely jam packed on nice days (except for…

To be fair, there's probably an efficient frontier problem in pedestrianizing neighborhoods. If you closed off the entirety of Manhattan to cars, it would probably destroy Manhattan, but if you closed off specific areas such that people could still move themselves and goods around the city, it would be much improved.

Most of Manhattan’s daytime population don’t get in by cars, so making it less car friendly is in the realm of possibility.

Really, south of Central Park, the parking rates alone are so expensive I wouldn’t bother driving in. Monthly rates in a garage are easily $300-500.

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#83

Post by bobthepanda »

freeone3000 wrote: post #19
axaxs wrote: post #15

One interesting article I read but can't be bothered to find now mentioned how we could better utilize malls by making top floors of condos. It was such a simple but seemingly good suggestion. Already have huge amounts of parking, tons of floor area for convenience, and stores would change to those that better served the tenants. And as that happens, more people from outside would be incentivized to visit. Perhaps th…

Having residential above retail is super common in non-American cities. It works pretty well in Montreal -- condo buildings usually have a grocery store and coffee shop in the lobby, while a strip of three-story buildings might have two stories of residential above things like a collectibles store or a martial arts dojo, with a grocery store on the corner. The problem with doing this with malls is you have minimum qu…

In Hong Kong the common model is one massive retail/amenities podium with several towers spiking out. You need daylight, but the towers themselves aren’t very wide; they’re mostly plus or star shaped around a central core.

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#84

Post by enriquto »

hannasm wrote: post #80
enriquto wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! didn't notice the snark on my first read. What can I say? Just come here and take a walk ;) EDIT: no need to take a plane... if you need some proof, look at this google maps/street view link: https://goo.gl/maps/iDirDFH16d8xMvwx9 All the things that you mention on your "snarky" message can be indeed found on the couple of pedestrian streets that you see here. Except for the cinema, but there is a theatre (now clo…

> walk less than 2km to the one in the next town I think the distance between rural towns is generally more like 5-10km each direction in the parts of the US I am familiar with. 2km through a densely populated urban area is very different from 10km through the countryside too.

Sure. Point is that any isolated urban nucleus of 30.000 people is very compact and already has everything that you need inside a small radius. You can live there without a car.

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#85

Post by steveBK123 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79
steveBK123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are reasons for zoning requirements that skylights don't solve, and they are largely around egress. Some mall layouts may be conducive enough to having condos put on the top level, or one could design a modern mall for that now (I've seen a few). However retrofitting onto many of the 80s-90s era malls with huge floorplans is unlikely to be economically feasible.

Can you explain how the egress problem is supposed to work? Suppose you have a giant square floor plan, and housing units like this: [01][02][03][04] [05][06][07][08] [09][10][11][12] [13][14][15][16] Then units 01-04 and 13-16 are on the exterior of the building, units 05-12 are on the interior with skylights, and there are hallways between them as shown. Where is the egress problem?

Zoning generally requires egress be possible from every room which is a sleeping quarters (or living space like living room) via a window or door to the outside. I’m not sure that a door to a common hallway would be considered legal egress. Further, even if it was, this would require each sleeping quarters within your apartment to have an emergency exit door to the common hallway, in addition to the door within your apartment. This would be pretty loud and unattractive.

Another zoning concern is that there is generally a rule like “every area of apartment must be within 30 feet of door/window to outside”. So if you create these deep cavernous apartments you won’t be able to meet this rule either.

For example in NYC, every room needs two forms of egress. Bedrooms this is the windows + door back to rest of your apartment. Living areas this is windows + door out to common hallway. It is illegal to create a room that has only 1 exit/entrance.

The concept here is that in the event of a fire if your 1 & only exit is blocked you are dead.

Similar rules apply to why in most jurisdictions you cannot legally finish off your basement unless it has sufficient exits directly to outside / windows big enough for a firefighter in full gear to fit through. This limits many existing basements for conversion depending on their depth as its hard to retrofit these into existing foundations..

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#86

Post by lazerpants »

bobthepanda wrote: post #82
lazerpants wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there's probably an efficient frontier problem in pedestrianizing neighborhoods. If you closed off the entirety of Manhattan to cars, it would probably destroy Manhattan, but if you closed off specific areas such that people could still move themselves and goods around the city, it would be much improved.

Most of Manhattan’s daytime population don’t get in by cars, so making it less car friendly is in the realm of possibility. Really, south of Central Park, the parking rates alone are so expensive I wouldn’t bother driving in. Monthly rates in a garage are easily $300-500.

That's pretty reasonable! I'm in Brooklyn and the garage by me is $500/month. Which is part of why I don't own a car.

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#87

Post by AtlasBarfed »

enriquto wrote: post #60
jcims wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How delightful! There are clothes, jewelry, music, furniture, hardware, electronics, cosmetics stores all within a few meters of your home? Eyewear, bookstores, mobile phone, candle shops and gift stores? Coffee shops, cinnabon, movie theaters and stores wholly dedicated to hats, mattresses and overpriced tea? All within a short walk? That’s incredible! The mall near me that has all of that requires a few thousand me…

> How delightful! There are clothes, jewelry, music, furniture, hardware, electronics, cosmetics stores all within a few meters of your home? Eyewear, bookstores, mobile phone, candle shops and gift stores? Coffee shops, cinnabon, movie theaters and stores wholly dedicated to hats, mattresses and overpriced tea? All within a short walk? Exactly. Most small towns in the suburbs of Paris are just like that if you live…

Americans are not very introspective/knowledgeable of their own economic, political, and infrastructural structure.. so they'll be pretty clueless of what the rest of the world is doing

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#88

Post by Cullinet »

bobthepanda wrote: post #81
jhbadger wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do live downtown in US cities, but at least since the 1990s when that became popular again after city crime rates fell (for reasons which are still being debated today), these housing options (generally condominiums and rowhouses) tend to be very expensive compared to living in the suburbs. So only the upper middle class/upper class can afford it. It's not that unlike the situation in other countries. Living i…

Meh, the US is still kind of odd. European cities tend to be wealthy in the center and less wealthy as you go out. US cities, at least the ones where downtown has turned around, have a donut-shaped wealth distribution; rich downtown, blighted inner-city and inner-ring, outer wealthy suburbs.

it's also just harder to rebuild and renew any downtown infrastructure, wherever located.

in the UK, town centre development has been hindered particularly by the effects of having caused a diverse small business and retail environment to grow around central developments, whose owners have fiercely opposed any disruption that could be created by heavy works, regardless of the importance to their ultimate survival.

consider where the central mall provides the only large scale car parking availability for the surrounding areas, like in my home town and the situation in Windsor afaict whenever I visit, which has a large town centre retail district without any suitable parking for the sprawl of retailers outward from the centre complexes.

edit splitting to avoid confusion after accidentally posting early :

concluding without the argument I originally intended, I suspect that the data is so poorly collected and used that we could very likely find many new ways to revitalise our town centers getting plenty of sensible fresh investment to pursue models we've been simply overlooking

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#89

Post by jollofricepeas »

enriquto wrote: post #38
jcims wrote: post #7

This seems like a woefully incomplete analysis. The same basic evolution happened in manufacturing and for largely the same reasons. Boutique job shops replaced by industralized mass production facilities replaced by abstracted labor and infrastructure in offshore contracts. Boutique stores worked downtown because there was no better option, not because it was great. Who wants to drive downtown to get shoes or a tie?…

> Who wants to drive downtown to get shoes or a tie? I had a hard time understanding the meaning of this sentence, and its context. The idea of "driving downtown to go shopping" is backwards to me. You live downtown, and walk a few meters to the shop. Then I realized that you may be from the USA, where your cities seem to be turned inside out. You are indeed a funny country.

The reason US cities are inside out is because of something called “white flight” and “redlining” that has happened as a result of slavery and racism unfortunately.

It’s a really sad story that’s helped make the poor even poorer.

You can learn more about it here:

- https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/white-f...

- https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2018/03/white-fligh...

- https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history...

- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/redlining-what-is-history-mike-...

Re: The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

#90

Post by lakkal »

jcims wrote: post #8
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell if satire or woefully unaware.

That's rude. It's a valid perspective. I dumped thousands of dollars in arcade games in the 70's and 80's and spent at least as much buying tshirts and toys and pizza or walking down to the theater and watching a movie.

In the 80s the malls usually had 1) an arcade, 2) at least one bookstore, sometimes two, 3) a toy/hobby store where you could buy RPGs and wargames, 4) a music store or two, and 5) 'food' of some kind. Good memories, though I rarely go to a mall these days.
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