The Mall Lives
I found this article to be way too long and rambling.  I could be wrong, but I think the author also suffers a bit from focusing on too small and unique samples.  You can use New York, LA, San Fran, (even a suburb of Tel Aviv) etc, as examples, but these are not representative samples of your average American community (be it any community large enough to (at least previously) support a mall).  Even in areas where there is no true urban center, or the urban center remains essentially deserted, Malls are still dying at a phenomenal rate.<p>The Internet and technology, has largely killed the mall.  Teenagers, for example, no longer need to go to the mall to exchange gossip and be &quot;seen.&quot; They also have high amount of disposable income.  (see: millennials and car usage for similar changes in a market) And Shopping online has become too easy for many people.<p>The malls that have been able to survive is due to the fact that they are more about entertainment (including shopping as a form of entertainment, such as &quot;build-a-bear&quot; and the like) rather than any other reason.  This is one of the reasons that the city centers that have been re-developed have been successful.  They&#x27;re not urban shopping centers, they&#x27;re urban entertainment centers that happen to have shopping.<p>There are other reasons that malls have been struggling as well (Suburban sprawl is a big one, especially due to factors such as in part, the Concentric Zone Model [0] (as housing stock gets older, and population increase, many persons move further out to newer&#x2F;better&#x2F;larger housing stock, and the previously housing is then taken up by a lower socio-economic class, which may no longer be able to support the local mall. So far, this has been repeating for the past 50ish years.)<p>The Mall may live, but they&#x27;re on life support.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Concentric_zone_model" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Concentric_zone_model</a>  note: There are problems with concentric zone model, but  it&#x27;s a model, it can still be good for explanations, especially in this case.