Those are also the "mall rat" generations, so it'd be pretty fitting lol.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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We can watch the original Fast and Furious, recreate a mockup of HTML eBay and put 5hp stickers on our mobility scooters with RGB under glow lighting, and sub's around our nitrous bottles.
I live my life one quarter footprint store front at a time...
And, naturally, we'd be hauling boomboxes blasting gangsta rap in the baskets of our mobility scooters. lol.
Our generation's old-folks home gonna be lit
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As a GenX, I would prefer seeing them made into some sort of public space? We are losing a lot of that, at least where I live. Indoor space in particular.
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counterargument; malls, arcades, and bookstores should come back in style because they were amazing and we don't know what we missed until it's gone.
Malls are sign of bad ciry planning
They will come back as the US shifts away from car centered culture, malls thrive in Europe
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If they come back, I hope they will be more accessible on foot, with a bike, or with efficient public transit. Because if they are still surrounded by deserts of parking lots, only filled with EVs instead of ICEs, they can continue to die.
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you have to go all the way down below the dirt to prep a site for residential units. With a toilet, shower, and sink per unit, the density of sewer and water plumbing is much higher than commercial. Fire codes also demand egress points (a.k.a. windows) for every bedroom - hard to do Inside a big box retail space.
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As a millennial I can tell you that most millennials I know wouldn't want this but instead make it a place for none corporation and community events and such. A public place where your not forced to buy things where can just exist with others even if you have zero money and accessible to all genders and disabilities and races.
And yes retrofit part of it for people who need to get back on there feet, and homeless people.
If we could retrofit them into homeless shelters we could but it would require rebuilding mostly everything as malls are designed for stores not housing people (for instance the bathrooms are not private and not easily accessible if you live somewhere in it)
I know it's hard to imagine since you've pretty much got to pay to exist anywhere today, but malls were a place to just exist. I spent hours and hours wandering around the mall in the eighties without any money.
Expanding on the thought, it was perfectly ok to be, get this, a TEENAGER existing without any money in a mall!
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Yesss, give us community spaces that are not designed around maximizing profits.
In a city in my country there was an old mall that was slowly taken over by bands who used the spaces as rehearsal rooms. It gained a huge following including some local big bands and concerts. They all paid rent too. Unfortunately, early this year, they were evicted by the owner and City Hall, out of nowhere and are on its way to become airbnb's for tourists...
Nothing new...
Elsewhere, someone suggested that it would be necessary to take the rebuild down to the dirt to handle plumbing and the like for individual units, but I'm not sure I agree.
Generally there is significant excess ceiling height in these commercial spaces, no reason the floor couldn't be raised throughout the space to accommodate plumbing and the like in a way that's easily accessible for future maintenance. You still end up with 8' ceilings (or probably rather more) throughout.
Over the years, I've watched a number of retail chains and malls die, sometimes suddenly and sometimes slowly. It's continuously seemed like a huge waste to me, when conversion to residential space would be relatively easy, relatively affordable, could be funded by local gov or nonprofit, and would make a significant difference in net housing costs in a given area.
When 'traditional' residential developers are competing with that, and with the ability to slap down standard-sized (AKA easy) risers/walls/etc. within commercial spaces of defined sizes, a further reduction in local housing costs is likely.
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This isn't a too shabby of an idea. It probably won't be used but a mix of stores and homes in one building sounds great.
The idea of apartments centered around a grocery plaza has been a thing for a while. It's almost an answer, except it still requires transportation to everything else. Plus the stores tend to be higher prices to support the cost of property and because they can.
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mall walks!
With those moving walkways you see in airports.
But keep the appearance of a mall.
That way when we all have Alzheimer's from micro plastics, we can wander around it and feel young
In some places they're already doing it to revitalize the majority of the mall, convert a section and suddenly you've got people around 24/7 that want services.
Yeah, they're trying that around here and failing spectacularly. The recent fascination for new construction in my area seems to be try this "Main Street, USA" shit where they build brutalist flat-roof apartment blocks but with the ground level being retail stores. The rationale seems to be to attempt to build some kind of enclave where people can live, work, and shop without ever having to leave. The only glaring caveats are that the only retail businesses that ever appear here are all shitty franchised fast-casual restaurants where nobody wants to go, with the gaps filled in by the usual parade of payday loan places, cash for gold, crossfit joints that attract no members, and a revolving door of nail salons and wannabe hipster barber shops opening and going out of business.
Notably, none of the retail joints at street level pay enough for anyone working there to afford the astronomical rent for one of the apartments in the same fucking building. These motherfuckers can't even set up a company town correctly...
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As a millenial, all I want is the LAN party old folks home.
Knock these things down and plant trees and stuff.
While we're at it knock all the corporate 9to5 office work buildings where all the employees can work from home and plant trees and stuff there too.
Trees and ponds and natural parks and shit, hiking trails...etc.
That would be really good, but this idea has been explored and unfortunately it is only viable on a very narrow amount of buildings. Most malls aren't properly built to be housing and the costs of adapting them for housing exceed the cost of just building new housing elsewhere. And the costs of tearing it down and rebuilding are even greater. Overall, Malls are economic net negatives for communities, all single use infrastructure constructions are.
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As other people have mentioned, this can be a hard problem.
However, malls are typically surrounded by massive amounts of space used for parking. There is a plan for the largest mall in my region to convert all of that land into residential spaces, 2000 apartments. The parking will be moving underground.
Seems like a decent idea to me.
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I've seen some concepts for mall-like communities based around retirement homes and elementary schools. Add a library, some shops, and other services, and you're off to a great start.
The old-but-still-able folks can serve as crossing guards, read books to kids, play games with them, perhaps help with coaching or other tasks, etc.. The young kids benefit from the wisdom and time spent with good role models, the retirees get much-needed social interaction, structure, and purpose.
A man can dream.
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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the person who came up with malls WANTED them to be just as you described... Not some shopping centre thing
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I'm down and claiming the candy store in 113!
Instead of puzzles and bingo night, we're having GoldenEye tournaments and D&D night!
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This sounds like such bad idea. Just demolish them.
I would love to see this kind of repurposing of properties to be far more common! Malls tend to be fairly central, so they make ideal locations for being nearby everything a person could need in a residential setting.
Wait you guys are retiring?
Nah. Vaporwave themed laser tag arenas. Let's go.
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