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Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#121

Post by vasco »

samatman wrote: post #91
freddie_mercury wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malls as coworking space would be literally the arcologies of dystopian cyberpunk. No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. It wouldn't be "best" for many people. Maybe "convenient" for bosses who don't like how much productivity they lose when a Meat Flavoured Productivity Unit has to go get a haircut or imbibe sustenance....

Ok but the perfect isn't the enemy of the good here. Being able to go for a climate-controlled one-kilometer walk every lunch break is a real luxury for a lot of people, it's way better than a cell in some high-rise near the highway. The mall could have a hackerspace too! It has potential.

The simple solution is work from home because most people already have a home, and simple solutions win. The only reason you're mentioning malls is because they are there, but unless you're a mall-walker on the weekends, I'm pretty sure the average developer's definition of a good lunch break isn't "walking past the mall McDonald's 3 times before returning to your mall wework" or whatever.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#122

Post by ilyanep »

beambot wrote: post #79

Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

I love how in the US, instead of building all these services and offices near each other and walkable from people's homes, we insist on ideas that force people to drive dozens of miles to get a walkable and convenient experience.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#123

Post by sergiomattei »

naturalauction wrote: post #58
tyingq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was curious so I pulled their list of 571 locations. 204 say either "Mall", "Center" or "Food Court". 18 say "Airport". Raw html if anyone is curious: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/tyingq/0e5701c4cb666cba9d...

FWIW this isn't necessarily indicative of the number of ones in airports. For example "Istanbul Havalimani H-42 HPS Sbarro" only says airport in Turkish and "Aeropuerto Los Cabos" is in Spanish (though maybe these are the exception, not the rule). Looking at it further, it does go both ways as well - for example "Gurnee Mills" is in a mall. There also seem to be a surprising number of Sbarros outside of the U.S thoug…

I actually ate at the Havalimani Sbarro!

It was my first taste of European pizza. It had no tomato sauce inside it. I went to the staff to signal that I wanted sauce in the pizza and they had no clue what I was saying.

That day I came to the shocking realization that that's how the rest of the world ate pizza.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#124

Post by JKCalhoun »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #88
beambot wrote: post #79

Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

Malls as coworking space would be literally the arcologies of dystopian cyberpunk. No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. It wouldn't be "best" for many people. Maybe "convenient" for bosses who don't like how much productivity they lose when a Meat Flavoured Productivity Unit has to go get a haircut or imbibe sustenance....

Logan's One On One

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#125

Post by prpl »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #88
beambot wrote: post #79

Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

Malls as coworking space would be literally the arcologies of dystopian cyberpunk. No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. It wouldn't be "best" for many people. Maybe "convenient" for bosses who don't like how much productivity they lose when a Meat Flavoured Productivity Unit has to go get a haircut or imbibe sustenance....

I think it’s fairly easy to rebuild an average 2-3 story department store into a large office building with many windows.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#127

Post by randmeerkat »

jonny_eh wrote: post #96
JoeDaDude wrote: post #64

First they got rid of the music stores. Then bookstores disappeared. Without them, there is no fun in going to the mall, haven't been to one in ages.

All that's left is GameStop, and it sucks.

Their stonk says otherwise.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#128

Post by smoovb »

cageface wrote: post #51
mistrial9 wrote: post #38

USA Malls are a symptom of car sprawl, and are textbook terrible landuse planning; they happen to have a super-simple business formula and appeal to certain fiefdom's egos.. cannot be fast enough for these formats to dry up, in my opinion

Malls here in Bangkok are crowded, vibrant places. I think it makes a big difference that most of them are directly accessible from train system.

Air-con. Sometimes you're just forced out of the heat into a mall.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#129

Post by Grimm1 »

vasco wrote: post #121
samatman wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but the perfect isn't the enemy of the good here. Being able to go for a climate-controlled one-kilometer walk every lunch break is a real luxury for a lot of people, it's way better than a cell in some high-rise near the highway. The mall could have a hackerspace too! It has potential.

The simple solution is work from home because most people already have a home, and simple solutions win. The only reason you're mentioning malls is because they are there, but unless you're a mall-walker on the weekends, I'm pretty sure the average developer's definition of a good lunch break isn't "walking past the mall McDonald's 3 times before returning to your mall wework" or whatever.

I don't want to work from home every day though and neither do a lot of people.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#130

Post by ryukafalz »

ilyanep wrote: post #122
beambot wrote: post #79

Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

I love how in the US, instead of building all these services and offices near each other and walkable from people's homes, we insist on ideas that force people to drive dozens of miles to get a walkable and convenient experience.

Right - I moved to the city because here in the US it's the only option to get any human-scale density. The next level down that you can commonly find is car-centric suburbia. The remaining human-scale places in the US outside of city centers are mostly isolated remnants from before we started knocking them all down to make room for cars. Nobody's building new ones.

(Unlike some other countries.)

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