If you build it, they will come!

Aribeth Zelin

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I think it's quite obvious that these malls are basically attempts to recreate European-style pedestrian zones, so it really shouldn't come in as much of a surprise that Disney is doing well in that regard.


Just build the passages narrow enough and you'll always have some shade. Throw in a few strategically placed fountains plus greenery and you get a pleasant micro-climate.

People have been using tricks like this to build cities in areas with much harsher climates for thousands of years.
Then there isn't room for all the cars to park. [We're in the US, afterall]

And I was born and partially raised in W Germany. I get homesick a fair bit anymore.
 

Dakota Tebaldi

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Then there isn't room for all the cars to park. [We're in the US, afterall]
That was one of the weirder things that made me question the idea for the one they built here. It has streets, but there is NO street parking at all - all parking is in three garages. If you want to shop you have to walk. I figured people wouldn't be up for this, but they were, in masses.

Doing a little reading I think I have a better idea what went on with indoor malls here. It seems to be a combination of some large anchor stores closing due to internet competition, and then a few big holding companies buying up a large numbers of malls and jacking stores' rent so much they couldn't stay in business.
 

Robert Jung

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One of the local malls has a train ride which mostly operates on holidays but unfortunately we don't have abything that inviting.
There are malls in this city, which is my city that have:

Theme park rides
Hidden court yards
Maze like connections to every apartment in the area
Built in train stations
Actual Asian style architecture
Pools
Hidden passages
Libraries
Museum exhibits
Giant chess boards
Public pianos
A massive indoor jungle with waterfalls, birds, and playgrounds which also happens to be the food court and an indigenous art museum.

This mall isn't dead on opening just because "people don't like malls",
It's dead because this guy made the typical hyper capitalistic mistake of doing everything as cheap as possible, . . . .
 
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EmpressOfCommunism

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Went around to do things today and happened to be nearby. Two things:
It's even uglier on the outside in real life then in the pictures.
Despite plentiful available space both in the mostly finished mall and around the area, the sales office is, bafflingly, on the other side of the city, in an equally ugly industrial area. Wow! Epic fail.
 

danielravennest

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Seems like the new trend is Forums, where all the walking is outdoors, and it seems like some also have apartments over the shops; like a live-work-play area.
They are building something like that in Fayetteville, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. Shopping core with housing upstairs, and more conventional subdivision around it, making the shopping walking or golf-cart distance (this part of Atlanta has lots of golf carts, and dedicated paths for them). For the play part, Fayetteville is home to Pinewood Atlanta Studios, where many of the Marvel films are shot. The money and jobs from film production is spurring a local economic boom.
 
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detrius

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Then there isn't room for all the cars to park. [We're in the US, afterall]
I'm talking about a pedestrian area - there wouldn't be any cars (except for the occasional emergency service vehicle).

The Disney Springs Town Center brought up by Kara is actually a good example for how an open air mall should be laid out, with cars and people kept separate.

And once you stop wasting all that space on cars, you can focus on making the place more enjoyable for humans.
 

Soen Eber

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Won't work where I live, not when you can count on -10F / -23C temps for 4-6 weeks and several months below freezing (0C) :(

Cars and short walks are a necessity.
 

detrius

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Won't work where I live, not when you can count on -10F / -23C temps for 4-6 weeks and several months below freezing (0C) :(

Cars and short walks are a necessity.
Of course it won't work in your area, I'm specifically talking about architecture in places with a humid subtropical climate, like Georgia.

That means mild winters.

Constructing a mall outside such an area naturally requires a different approach to building.


I've said this before: one of the main problems of American architecture is that people want to use the same building style from California to North Dakota and from Arizona to Maine. If you want to create a type of house that's both viable in tropical and subarctic regions and can handle both humid and arid climates, then you'll end up sealing it off from the environment. You've essentially designed a spaceship when you could just have tailored the building to fit the area that it's meant to be in.
 
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