Let's go to the mall?

I read an interesting article today by one Chadwick Matlin, suggesting that it's time to shut down all the malls. What initally caught my eye about this article was the weird-to-bad job it does of encouraging readers to YouTube How I Met Your Mother's "Let's Go to the Mall" video. Other pop culture shout-outs are made therein to the films Dawn of the Dead and Mall Rats. It's an article that spends a lot of needless time searching for a hook it never finds, before making a less-than-compelling case for its conclusion.

Matlin discusses three justifications for the advent of the mall—why we needed them in the first place—and then explains how times have changed such that these justfications no longer apply:

1). Malls were justified because they saved time by allowing us to combine trips. But Wal-mart, Target, and Amazon.com now perform the same function.

2). Malls were justified because renting retail space in a mall was more cost-effective than purchasing retail space. But as property values decline, being your own landlord becomes less and less expensive.

3). Malls were justified because retail creates jobs for young and working class people. But getting rid of the mall doesn't mean getting rid of the stores; it just means that the stores move. Except for mall security and mall administration, the jobs created by the mall ought to remain even if the mall itself closes.

Argument (1) is pretty solid. The Wal-mart Supercenter and e-commerce are not passing fads, we can all agree; they are forever. But (2) and (3) don't seem quite so sturdy.

(2) is not so much a reason why I should favor closing the malls; it's a reason why, if true, they're already doomed.

(3) is even more flawed. It presumes that the stores will be just as profitable outside the mall as they were in it. Seriously? Do you know anybody who is responsible for his or her own transportation, who thinks that a drive across town to check out what's new at just Spencer's Gifts, or just Hot Topic, or just Claire's Boutique, is worth it? Would you stand in line for a Mrs. Fields cookie or an Orange Julius if the storefront didn't lie precisely on the footpath between points A and B?

My point is that a non-negligible portion of the job market is founded upon foot traffic, and if you take away the traffic, those jobs go with it.

In our area anyway, malls aren't going anywhere. They're just evolving into outdoor, pedestrian-friendly shopping spaces. Witness the new outdoor extension to the Mall of Louisiana, and the development at Perkins Rowe. In Bossier City they have the River Walk. The stores in all of these developments are somewhat higher-end than you'd expect from a mall, but the idea is the same. Stores that are too niche to make it on their own are able, with the aid of a pleasant atmosphere, to band together and forge a working eco-system of commerce. You can't just break up that eco-system and expect the constitutents to remain as functional as before.