I guess, this is some of a hen and egg problem, as the argument is mostly about density and the economics thereof. (As the cost of extensive, car-centric infrastructure rises, the income generated per area drops and the reinvestment necessary to maintain this infrastructure approaches the median income of the inhabitants.)
Once, you are going the way of extensive infrastructure, malls may be actually some of a remedy to the problem, since they concentrate the necessary infrastructure, instead of each business occupying and maintaining a vast parking lot of their own, including all the infrastructure for access by car. (On a side note, malls were once inspired by some structural aspects of Vienna, where businesses of a kind tended to aggregate in certain areas – also an argument to density.) On the other hand, as you are aggregating your businesses in a major attractor, you're also depriving your townscape of landmarks and any reasons for the population to go and aggregate there, leading to an inevitable depletion (in terms of semantics, economics, and structural density) of centers and to even more suburban structure. Also, malls are mostly single-use areas, where you put all your business aspects of your town in a dedicated, single basket, by this decoupling and separating major aspects of life in a spacial expression. Worse may be what seems to come after malls: big businesses only, each sitting in a vast space of their own, lined up along stroads, single-use areas hundreds of feet apart, generating even less income per area, while requiring even more infrastructure to connect.