Traditional malls are far superior than strip malls, amirite?

Strip malls are usually small chains of stores, one property with one major business being the center of it all. Plaza is another word for those. Outdoor malls are just that. Like the Shops at Cabazon, that's a proper outdoor mall. The indoor malls are definitely much, much better.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Wait strip malls are seen as "fancier"?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

In the SF Bay Area you get a lot of outdoor malls like Stanford and Santana Row that house a lot of high end retail. It works great here. There was one when I lived in NY in Yonkers. Did not work well there.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It helps being in a place you actually care to be outside for more than a month out of the year.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Yeah. I remember going to the Yonkers one once and being like "but why?"

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Sounds like OP is conflating "outdoor shopping centers (malls)" with "strip malls"

by Anonymous 1 year ago

They are when you call them a "town center"

by Anonymous 1 year ago

agreed, it reflects ourselves distancing from one another and the decline of 3rd spaces.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

>it reflects ourselves distancing from one another Don't go far, it's so "them" will not be attracted to it. You know who "them" are.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think this has to do with costs of upkeep. As an owner of an outdoor mall, you don't have to pay for the infrastructure to heat or cool the "public" areas of a traditional mall. With the strip/outdoor mall types every individual store owner has to solve their own problems. The answer is always money.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Nailed it.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Same. It also was seen as a staple of youth to go to the mall Friday nights with friends and just walk around. Now there's not much for the young kids to do imo. Also nothing like running to the mall for a last minute outfit or sitting in a food court. Oh well

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I sometimes go to our local mall and it is just weird. I have no idea how it remains open as it's practically a ghost town. Last time I was there, my kids and I were pretending we were in an abandoned mall in a zombie movie and trying not to laugh when we saw shoppers who could pass for zombies . .there were a few.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It depends on where in my area. Some malls are ghost towns but the one nearby is pretty busy.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I miss malls. I think the one down side was when you only want to go to one store. That's the advantage of strip malls, you can just park in front of the store you want to go to. I could see a well designed mall working. One where each store has an outside and inside entrance.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

And that applies to weather as well imho. You can park in front of the store and walk a very short distance. With mall parking you have to walk more while being exposed to the elements to get inside.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I see your points, but the trend is definitely away from interior malls. I'm not totally sure why, but they are going the way of the dinosaur. Enjoy them while they last.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

They are thriving in places like Thailand. I think in Thailand malls are set up as how they were originally visioned - a combination of stores, community space, hotel, and apartments

by Anonymous 1 year ago

In Thailand they make sense (the heat) plus they don't need to make exclusive spaces without "them" like in the US. Some malls are "rich preferred" but the center of Bangkok is for everybody.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There was a time when people went out and liked to socialize. Now everyone just sits in their house on social media ordering Amazon prime if they need anything.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

When the weather's bad outside, I visit my local mall to walk around, and may also do some shopping and have lunch while I'm there.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

>It breaks my heart that the malls (at least in my area) and going the way of the dinosaur in lieu of "fancier" strip malls where every store is outside. Agreed. In Canada, a place where you will find very cold winters and many rainy days, there has been a trend over the past 15+ years to build these weird "open" malls along a strip or in a cluster that force you to walk around outside all the time, exposed to the elements. Not the best shopping experience, at least where I live.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Same here in Michigan. I used to go to Lakeside Mall a couple times per month with my friends when we were all teens but that mall seems to be going away. Partridge Creek is doing well but it's an outdoor mall in Michigan. I'm not about to go walking around it in the snow, rain, or 90F heat.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think part of it is that the mall owners don't have to air condition the entire mall. They can charge the renters to cool their stores instead. More profit for the mall owners!

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I live within driving distance of 3 malls. One of them is in its final legs. The other two are still doing really good and one of them just got half of itself renovated

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I agree wholeheartedly.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There's still a place for malls, we just need WAYYYY fewer of them than we had, due to online shopping.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I completely agree. As a child of the 70s and 80s, I really miss malls.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Shopping centres (traditional malls) are the go-to here in Australia. Strip malls are getting more and more abandoned. Shopping centres are almost as busy as they've ever been, and it's still hard to get a park sometimes, usually around Christmas. I'm so glad they're still popular here, it's just so much easier going around one big building where everything is closer together and not having to worry about weather or anything. Often people will go shopping on hot days just for the air conditioning.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Can you explain what you mean by traditional? Strip malls existed long before what you define as a "traditional" mall. That being said. Malls are only really superior when you're shopping for multiple types of product. Which is why malls are so crowded during the holidays. Strip malls are better because you can, often times, park right next to the store you want, get in, make your purchase, and leave. "Traditional" malls, you may have to park as far as a half mile away from the store you want to visit. Deal with potential crowds and push your way to the store you want. I'll also say that this depends largely on where you live, and weather, etc. I'm in southern California. The weather here is near "perfect" almost all year round.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I'm thankful for interior malls in my country. They're packed and thriving. They've got everything. Movie theatres, grocery stores, stationary gift shops, clothes store, food courts. The concept of strip malls feels cold

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My town has the shopping center from Hell. It's a mix of "anchor store" chains you'd see in a strip mall (petco, a craft store, bed bath and beyond) and "mall stores" I rarely see freestanding (forever 21, American Eagle, journeys, Sephora). It's somehow designed in a way that's simultaneously almost impossible to safely walk between stores, and an absolute nightmare to drive between them. I truly wish they'd just gone with a nice indoor mall and put some of the strip mall stuff next door.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's ironic that malls replaced high streets and now malls are becoming high streets whither actual high street is still empty

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I prefer traditional malls more and there's one in my area that's pretty busy.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

If anyone has been to the baybrook mall in Houston, I feel like that is a very efficient way to design a mall. Sort of an outdoor, almost village(?) Type of feel with some stores and larger sit down restaurants outside that you can walk around. Then a more traditional indoor mall with a large fast food court adjacent to it for rainy days.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Traditional malls have this itty-bitty little problem of requiring the other stores to take rent hikes if a store leaves. This is what killed a lot of malls in the US as a cascade effect of stores moving out for cheaper pastures and causing other stores to pick up the slack. Saw this happen at the local mall. It kind of died when a few big stores (especially Sears) closed up shop, everyone else had to take the rent hike.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Agree. I miss the malls of the 1980s. Today they are sad and empty.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

TIL there's an actual name for those kinds of places

by Anonymous 1 year ago

TIL some places still have malls

by Anonymous 1 year ago

We refer to them in the rest of the world as "The city center". Weird, uh?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I keep hearing about these strip malls but I have yet to see one where anyone has stripped or is even nude.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Amazon killed the mall.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Based on your description, you're mixing up outdoor shopping centers and strip malls. Strip malls aren't ‘fancy' by any stretch. Shopping centers are the open equivalent of indoor shopping malls. Strip malls sit along a sidewalk, whereas shopping centers have their own dedicated walkway/plaza.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

If you want to make a day of shopping at multiple places they're great. Trying to go to one specific place is WAY more annoying though, especially at a large mall like King of Prussia, could be a 10 minute walk not including the walk from my car to the mall itself. I get that a 10 minute walk isn't the end of the world but if I just want one thing, it's way more annoying than parking like 30 seconds from the front door.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Even in the mall where I live which is a smaller mall it takes about 10 minutes. I don't have a car though so I kind of prefer walking inside though especially depending on the weather outside.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

What are called "strip malls" now have always been around. They were either stores along a street or small "shopping centers". That's what I'd call "traditional". The word "mall" became common when big shopping centers were built, usually indoors, far from the traffic. This started to become common in the late 1960s. They're dying for several reasons, as most brick & mortar stores are having a hard time.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Tell me you've never owned a business in a mall without telling me you've never owned a business in a mall.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Stip mall rent is around 4k mall rent is around 8k

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Gurnee? Vernon Hills?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Strip malls are better for people with cars while traditional malls are better for people without them. Even though there is some pushback to car-centered Cities the US is still too focused on making things work best for them rather then for people who don't. The more strip malls exist the more it encourages people to drive, which means more people that prefer them over malls, which means malls go out of business and you have more need for a car. And the cycle continues.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I would like our outdoor mall more if parking was kept outside of it instead of every street basically having parking. Indoor malls have many upsides but the ones near us are so damn packed that it's just a hassle

by Anonymous 1 year ago

its still poppin down on slauson

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Agree in a way, although they suck if you just want to run in for a coffee or something from the convenience store.

by Anonymous 1 year ago