This is an interesting article on the travails of malls. Like John Tierney over at Instapundit, I was struck by this passage:
Is it possible to breathe life into dead malls? “Sometimes a mall goes out of business because it has lost its economic reason for being,” architect Victor Dover notes, but “almost every community needs something.” We need to “stop thinking about these as failed shopping center properties and start thinking about them as potential mixed-use properties.” Reinventing shopping malls won’t be easy. They are large and inflexible spaces. Yet, as Victor Gruen knew, we have always needed gathering places. That is why we should look back to Gruen’s original vision of the mall to find its purpose for the decades ahead.
Many of these shopping centers are ideal sites for transit-oriented, mixed-use developments that include housing, retail, office, services, and public space.
Continue reading How do you revitalize the American shopping mall?