Malls could have been a pretty good solution to a growing problem. I say this because I live a few minutes from a defunct mall that predates the behemoths of the 80s and 90s, and I've thought about how it could be made useful. Imagine a mall that had a grocer, a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. Add in an ACE Hardware, post office and Doctors office and it would be pretty useful. I think malls could have been a useful response to American's car driven city design, but for some reason they just wound up being consoooom product centers.
Edit: used the word "useful" four times like a grade schooler, leaving it as a monument to poor writing.
More seriously, that’s an interesting idea. I do think something like that could have potential—like a small downtown or a city square built into a single building with lots of parking.
It's a corpo town square. There are usually apartments nearby. Then you have parking and shops. There's usually not a grocery store. Anyways people also build what I call little fake cities, too. People like them a lot. I'm kind of put off by the fakeness.
Malls could have been a pretty good solution to a growing problem. I say this because I live a few minutes from a defunct mall that predates the behemoths of the 80s and 90s, and I've thought about how it could be made useful. Imagine a mall that had a grocer, a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. Add in an ACE Hardware, post office and Doctors office and it would be pretty useful. I think malls could have been a useful response to American's car driven city design, but for some reason they just wound up being consoooom product centers.
Edit: used the word "useful" four times like a grade schooler, leaving it as a monument to poor writing.
Did you just describe a mall?
It's a corpo town square. There are usually apartments nearby. Then you have parking and shops. There's usually not a grocery store. Anyways people also build what I call little fake cities, too. People like them a lot. I'm kind of put off by the fakeness.