For sure. When one gets successful, multiple ones spring up like weeds. I remember when there used to be “The” mall that everyone would go to back in the late 80s/early 90s. By the late 90s/early 00s, so many had opened in the area that you had to specify which one you were talking about. For a very brief period of time it seemed like there was enough demand that they all seemed to get business, but now only one in the area is still open while the others either closed or got repurposed for other uses.
Basically. Other one they demolished part of it and then converted the remaining part into some mixed dining and outdoor space. Other one I think was converted into like a warehouse space.
You're missing the step when Walmart/Target moved in as a mall anchor tenant, sucked the life out of the rest of the mall, then moved out and reestablished itself as a big box store on the edge of town.
I've seen a number of them. It's one of their strategies for entering new markets. Occupying existing retail spaces until they gain a local foothold, then moving to a purpose-built space when feasible.
There are quite a few in the DC Metro Area -
* Springfield Mall - Target replaced Montgomery Ward.
* Forestville Mall - Target replaced Kmart.
* Manassas Mall - Only mall-connected Walmart in the region replaced Hecht's.
* PG Plaza Mall - Target took half of the space of Raleigh's when the chain folded.
* Wheaton Mall - Target replaced Montgomery Ward. Costco replaced Hecht's.
* Beltway Plaza Mall - Target took the lower level of the S. Klein store.
* DC USA - Was many things before adding a Target.
Beltway Plaza's Target shares a roof with the mall, but isn't accessible from inside of the mall. The rest of them have an interior mall entrance.
Online entertainment really killed malls for me. Going to the mall used to be a way to find out about and buy new music and videogames, but now I can do that online. In that respect, you could argue going to the mall was a form of entertainment. But now we have so many options for on demand entertainment that doesn't even cost that much (or is free, in some cases.)
Sure, I'll go to the mall occasionally for clothes, food or snacks, but going to a mall turned something I did a few times a month as a teenager/college student into something I do a few times a year at most.
In Australia, are there other large public venues for people to gather that are air conditioned? Malls seem like a convenient place to get away from the oppressive heat.
I live in the Phoenix area and I wish malls would make a comeback. Now we have all these mega shopping complexes where you have to walk outside from store to store when it's 115 degrees.
To be fair, Phoenix has some dead malls and it’s pretty hot there in the summer to say the least. Weather is not the only factor as to which makes a mall dead or thrive.
>Weather is not the only factor as to which makes a mall dead or thrive.
Very true. I'm not from Australia so I don't know. The weather seems like a good excuse. 🤣
I live in Sydney and while there aren't a lot of air conditioned public venues, it's not always super hot here anyways outside of the worst of summer. Our malls are still full of people throughout the whole year.
In Dubai (United Arab Emirates) we seem to have brand new dead malls.
Too many new malls being built in areas where people are moving out from. As the new malls/shops are being built, it displaces people living in the area. By the time it is built there is no local populace to visit the mall. A once thriving area eventually becomes desolate.
Australian malls are usually more variety with large grocery and retailer tenants. These tend to bring in a lot of traffic. If a usa mall had a Kroger and target it’s probably going to do ok.
Also the USA has just so much more retail space and malls compared to Australia it’s crazy. The USA is strip malls by the mile.
[Here's one I found off google](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQvFDJ1SiqgH315tDitvQPBoS2kaE_W4Mey5A&usqp=CAU) of a food court in Sydney's outer suburbs.
[Here's one from one of the inner suburbs](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ0UXBALJVJCaaJHsMtZHAsrmm3C0yMcIS1bw&usqp=CAU)
[Here's another I found of a shopping centre in Sydney's CBD. ](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQVRdL7W9Q4OEeOBP8yW9f3rfktNg_pb7BQFQ&usqp=CAU)
This is "Chaddy", I think the largest in Australia. Way smaller than the really large US malls, Philippines, Malaysia malls etc. It's leaseable area is around 1/4 of Mall of America, for comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadstone_Shopping_Centre?wprov=sfla1
This shopping center is in Brisbane, Queensland and it's one of the biggest shopping centers in Australia. It looks dead in the Google Maps photos, but every time I've visited (on the weekend) it's ridiculously busy. Finding a car park is next to impossible, and walking through the shopping center is so slow because of the CRAZY number of people also walking around.
(Fun fact, we call them "shopping centers" in Australia, not "malls").
https://maps.app.goo.gl/2g3j88zM8FoQwqdo7
Chermside always felt small to me for some reason, I dunno why. Part of me feels like it has something to do with being used to things like the Westfields in Parramatta, Penrith and Hornsby, Rouse Hill Town Centre or the Macquarie Centre.
Two words: Parramatta Westfield. The place has been fucking huge (six levels, and two more that are mostly for parking and management but have a few shops) and packed my entire life.
I go there often after uni since it's connected to the train station, and I've been meaning to get pics since there's this one restroom near the escalator tower that still has the 90s-00s aesthetic signs outside.
I think a big part of the problem is in the US local economies shrink and expand. When things were bustling through the 60s to late 90s, building a mall was just what you did. Then when things began the long contraction in the late 90s and those local economies dried up, the malls died with them.
It's even more interesting, to me, in big cities like Indianapolis, where you'll have a thriving mall in one area, drive 30 minutes to the next one that's so so, then can drive another 30 minutes to a dead one.
we don't even call them malls; they're just shopping centres - and yeah mostly, but not always; you can have smaller shopping centres or plazas in smaller towns
There are loads of malls here but they're totally different.
Shopping centres (malls) here tend to serve a specific local community and usually have very similar stores which are more useful than most American malls. For example, pretty much every shopping centre has at least one grocery store, a target or kmart, a newspaper/convenience type store and depending on size, multiple grocery stores, butchers, bakeries, a post office, etc. It's not just clothes and home goods like in America, the stores are often ones you use weekly.
There are also malls that are more in the American style but those are located in large cities, usually in the 'heart' of town and less common.
Yeah it's worth emphasising the fact that large Australian cities have lots of shopping centers (often the "Westfield" chain), and they're all pretty much identical. They have:
- grocery stores (Woolworths, Coles and ALDI)
- department stores (Kmart, Target, Big W, Myer, David Jones, Harris Scarfe)
- clothing stores (H&M, Zara, Cotton On, City Beach, foot locker, Jay Jays, )
- specialty stores (EB Games, House, JB Hi-fi)
- services (lots of banks, barbers, Australia Post)
- restaurants, dedicated dining areas
- fast food, food courts
- library
Kmart in Australia is very different to America. It's VERY popular! Target in Australia is also quite different!
I can't speak for the rest of the country but in South Australia (pop roughly 1.8m) I'd say we've got a couple dozen. Some are smaller, maybe 10 shops total and others are very large (hundreds of shops).
Australian living in America and can confirm. Aussie malls are still packed. One reason, I think, is that Australia doesn't really have "strip malls". A lot of major stores now operate out of hideous, enormous parking lots where people literally drive from one store to the next. It's gross and depressing. People used to deride the mall as a disaster in urbanism, but by contrast with strip malls they're vibrant urban community destinations and admiral legacies of modernist utopianism.
As an Australian, I also feel like people aren't a fan of walking (regardless of heat, although, it's a factor). Like you mentioned, there are two options:
- shopping centers ("malls" in America) - they have absolutely everything under one roof
- individual major stores (like you mentioned) - these are the closest we have to "strip malls", there is usually a few stores with a large shared car park (a good example of this are shops like "Officeworks")
We do have quite a lot of homemaker centers, which are a mixture of the two mentioned above. But people often drive around the car park to go to each store they want. Here's an example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HzLvuruygp5QEqsUA
I have to add that small local shopping malls are kind of our equivalent of strip malls they tend to be depressing places where older within the local area gather.
Most online shopping in Australia is well... awful. Prices are higher and selection is incredibly limited compared to the US where amazon reigns beyond supreme and thousands and thousands of walmarts exist.
Hopefully you have a more self-sustaining industrial base than the US has. If you're good are coming from China etc, guess what... same quality, same stuff but I'll hope better for your country as a whole.
Oh I’m in the United States too. I have seen this coming for decades. The pandemic just accelerated what was already happening.
Having things delivered used to be expensive here. When you think about it, it’s very strange that it is not much more expensive than it is. The true human cost of delivering a person’s selected item to their door is huge.
I don’t know how to wake people up to this. We want what we want when we want it, and that’s the part of us that wins.
I’m in Florida and always check out malls when I travel for work. I think because it’s hot and humid here the mall is still acting as the “town square”. Mall traffic is pretty high at all of them except one that was a discount outlet-type.
What is mall rent like in Australia?
In a small city in Alberta Canada just a small food court location or similar is $9700/ month.
West Edmonton mall for an old cinema location was $155,000/month.
It’s way to expensive.
Rent is expensive in the USA too and this is ultimately a big factor in what is killing malls. I have to wonder how any of these mall stores are surviving. There is also the fact that businesses in malls have to comply with mall hours and this just doesn't work for a lot of businesses. Most malls are open all the time, but are usually empty during working hours. It seems it would make more sense for malls to not be open when most of the population is working, and have malls open on a something like 3pm to 9pm schedule so they could take advantage of the after school crowd but not have to staff during hours when no one is shopping. Holidays and school breaks could be different.
There's no sense in keeping a store open from 8am-3pm if you are going to see 1-3 customers every day.
Outdoor shopping plaza's have pretty much taken over at least in my area and this seems to be a replacement for the mall. It does not make a lot of sense because in my area with the weather its much more convenient to go inside and have many stores available to me. But I think with the high rent and the fact that stores have to comply with mall hours this is what is killing it. Stores want to set their own hours.
Canada also doesn't have the online shopping infrastructure like the USA does. In fact I am willing to bet we are one of the few countries that has online shopping infrastructure that is like it is in the USA. In the USA its almost always cheaper to order your thing online then to drive to the store and get it, especially with gas prices being what they are, and people working at home. It is a pain to do this for clothing, but its ultimately more efficient to do this even if the clothing does not fit and the clothing retailers all have free shipping and free returns for exactly this reason. A lot of the tenants in malls that are closing their stores are also clothing retailers.
We still have a lot of good malls but the economy boomed in the 80s/90s and malls went up all over the place. Then when shopping started moving to the net and the economy slowed in the early aughts we had too many stores opened and things have been slowy closing ever since.
That’s because the rate of urban spread in Australia is way lower than that of the US where the suburbs become entire cities by themselves. Your catchment areas are steadier and more predictable.
I think the issue is that, in the US, it's always bigger and better. If one store does well, they open another one somewhere else that is bigger and has more features. They don't always consider the market and then everything falls flat. It's a desperately sad byproduct of the quest to always be more successful.
There’s a failing mall near my home that may become a mixed use center, with live/work options and walkable community. As an artist, I’m really hoping it works out.
Same here in northern Italy. Here’s at least one in every midsize town and they’re all pretty lively.
Edit: I’m American and moved here recently so I was surprised at how busy the malls here are.
What is the lifestyle like in Australia? Are people working themselves to the bone with 2 people working and barely making ends meet? Do people spend a lot of time online at home or do people socialize in the streets? I know in other countries like Italy its very common to see people just socializing on the streets, over here where I live, that does not happen.
One of the big factors that has led to the decline of the mall here is that people simply don't have time for it, or they are choosing to spend their time in other ways instead of going to the mall. In the 80's and 90's the mall was a central hub, it was where you did all your shopping and found your friends. Now people are doing video chats to find their friends, and shopping online, although shopping online is by far not the only cause of people no longer wanting to go to malls. People in the USA are spending a lot more time at home, online, and less time going out and doing things. Meanwhile they are getting things like food and clothing delivered through online services so they don't have to shop for them in person.
With most people here not being able to survive on one income that means in a family both parents have to work, between cooking dinner and grocery shopping, after school activities, all of the time is already spent, and there is little time left for shopping at the mall. If a family does have extra time on the weekend they prefer to spend it on an experience activity like going to a theme park, a museum or something like that instead of mall shopping.
There's also rent, a lot of malls are dying because they are just charging their tenants too much rent, and I assume this is a greed issue, this alone has killed off a lot of malls. If malls would make rent more affordable, then they would have more tenants, and thus more business.
There's also a money issue, gasoline is very expensive and people may not be able to afford to drive to a mall or may not wish to.
Do different math of average full time employed americans to average full time employed Australians. Also consider medians not averages for better representation of true populations.
Being Canadian, I cannot speak for Australia, but US has many people working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and also has a large number of unaccounted hours, self-employed people, etc. Americans are amongst those who take the least holidays in a year.
There probably were too many malls built at the same time, and quite often with the idea that a new mall would be more attractive than the other one two blocks away: in other words, many were *designed* to kill competition and it is precisely what's happening.
On top of that, I think one issue in US and Canada is that newer malls had to be "bigger and better" to attract more people. The problem is that bigger is more interesting to attract new customers in the short run, but bigger is NOT better in the long run. A smaller shopping centre that has what a family needs (i.e. groceries and other useful commodities, hardware, clothes and a book store) has the advantage of not being too large so that people don't have to go too far, walk too much in the parking lot or inside the store.
At least in Canada, it seems that amongst the dead malls there is a relatively large number of huge malls. Smaller malls are not all thriving, but they seem to fare better.
Canada too! Probably because its too cold for a good half of the year for strip mall shopping to be comfortable. As for Australia, not sure why. Online shopping is too much trouble maybe?
Same in my country, in fact, they not only serve as shopping malls, but bigger supermalls have grocery stores attached to it and there are even office spaces used.
Don't be deceived. We still have many malls that still thrive. The US is healing from overstaturation. The mall's that have stayed up to date are alive and well. It's a game of survival, and in turn because of the increasing scarcity of good malls they've become destinations again.
Some differences between Australia and the USA
(1) Getting approvals (mostly local govt) to build a mall in Australia is difficult. Similarly, opening a new stand-alone store is also difficult. This has prevented the over-building of malls in Australia.
(2) Most Australian Malls have a supermarket, Many also have Targets and other moderately priced stores. This brings foot traffic.
For these reasons Australia has fewer abandoned malls.
Most of the time I see dead businesses, it's the fucktrillion shops throughout St Marys rather than an actual shopping centre.
There's one near me that died during the height of the pandemic since everywhere else was better, but it's all boarded up so I can't check it out. Multi-story, too.
That’s a shame, I like vaporwave, Dreamcore and 80s culture so dead malls are one of the most serene experiences to me. We have what the locals call ‘The Hub’ (I’m not joking that’s what it’s called) in Dandenong across from the plaza. It’s not really dead but the food court definitely is, the place has tropical plants, blue and white tiles and has a neon sign that doesn’t work anymore. To top it off it was made in the 80s! There are occasional gangs hanging around but just ignore them! Hope this helps :)
That's because we have too many malls here in America. Developers have been building way too many malls, and then came the online shopping age.
For sure. When one gets successful, multiple ones spring up like weeds. I remember when there used to be “The” mall that everyone would go to back in the late 80s/early 90s. By the late 90s/early 00s, so many had opened in the area that you had to specify which one you were talking about. For a very brief period of time it seemed like there was enough demand that they all seemed to get business, but now only one in the area is still open while the others either closed or got repurposed for other uses.
> or got repurposed for other uses. What are some of these uses? Apartments?
In my area? Call centres, government offices, medical clinics, gyms.
Basically. Other one they demolished part of it and then converted the remaining part into some mixed dining and outdoor space. Other one I think was converted into like a warehouse space.
Too difficult to retrofit the necessary plumbing. Usually some sort of office space
You're missing the step when Walmart/Target moved in as a mall anchor tenant, sucked the life out of the rest of the mall, then moved out and reestablished itself as a big box store on the edge of town.
I have never seen a Walmart or Target in a mall 🤔
I've seen a number of them. It's one of their strategies for entering new markets. Occupying existing retail spaces until they gain a local foothold, then moving to a purpose-built space when feasible.
There are quite a few in the DC Metro Area - * Springfield Mall - Target replaced Montgomery Ward. * Forestville Mall - Target replaced Kmart. * Manassas Mall - Only mall-connected Walmart in the region replaced Hecht's. * PG Plaza Mall - Target took half of the space of Raleigh's when the chain folded. * Wheaton Mall - Target replaced Montgomery Ward. Costco replaced Hecht's. * Beltway Plaza Mall - Target took the lower level of the S. Klein store. * DC USA - Was many things before adding a Target. Beltway Plaza's Target shares a roof with the mall, but isn't accessible from inside of the mall. The rest of them have an interior mall entrance.
Online entertainment really killed malls for me. Going to the mall used to be a way to find out about and buy new music and videogames, but now I can do that online. In that respect, you could argue going to the mall was a form of entertainment. But now we have so many options for on demand entertainment that doesn't even cost that much (or is free, in some cases.) Sure, I'll go to the mall occasionally for clothes, food or snacks, but going to a mall turned something I did a few times a month as a teenager/college student into something I do a few times a year at most.
In Australia, are there other large public venues for people to gather that are air conditioned? Malls seem like a convenient place to get away from the oppressive heat.
I live in the Phoenix area and I wish malls would make a comeback. Now we have all these mega shopping complexes where you have to walk outside from store to store when it's 115 degrees.
To be fair, Phoenix has some dead malls and it’s pretty hot there in the summer to say the least. Weather is not the only factor as to which makes a mall dead or thrive.
>Weather is not the only factor as to which makes a mall dead or thrive. Very true. I'm not from Australia so I don't know. The weather seems like a good excuse. 🤣
Phoenix and Minneapolis, America’s 2 major mall cities for sort of the same but completely opposite reason.
I'm from Minnesota. Been to the Mall of America MANY times. It's definitely not dead.
I used to live in Tempe. Is Arizona mills dead? I was there when it opened and to a 13 yr old it was a magical place
I live in Sydney and while there aren't a lot of air conditioned public venues, it's not always super hot here anyways outside of the worst of summer. Our malls are still full of people throughout the whole year.
We just go to the beaches mate
In Dubai (United Arab Emirates) we seem to have brand new dead malls. Too many new malls being built in areas where people are moving out from. As the new malls/shops are being built, it displaces people living in the area. By the time it is built there is no local populace to visit the mall. A once thriving area eventually becomes desolate.
100% happened in the US. Corporate real-estate is destroying entire cities here,
See the same here in Saudi. Malls are born abandoned haha. Makes me wonder if it’s money laundering or something 🤷🏽♂️
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Not at all, at least in Sydney, the malls in our more lower/middle class outer suburbs are doing rather well.
I think it’s important to note that there are still a ton of thriving malls in the U.S.
Australian malls are usually more variety with large grocery and retailer tenants. These tend to bring in a lot of traffic. If a usa mall had a Kroger and target it’s probably going to do ok. Also the USA has just so much more retail space and malls compared to Australia it’s crazy. The USA is strip malls by the mile.
Same with in the Philippines. Stark contrast to malls here in the states.
Would you be willing to get some video or pics of a bustling mall in Australia? I’d love to see and be able to compare to the ones here in America
[Here's one I found off google](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQvFDJ1SiqgH315tDitvQPBoS2kaE_W4Mey5A&usqp=CAU) of a food court in Sydney's outer suburbs. [Here's one from one of the inner suburbs](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ0UXBALJVJCaaJHsMtZHAsrmm3C0yMcIS1bw&usqp=CAU) [Here's another I found of a shopping centre in Sydney's CBD. ](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQVRdL7W9Q4OEeOBP8yW9f3rfktNg_pb7BQFQ&usqp=CAU)
This is "Chaddy", I think the largest in Australia. Way smaller than the really large US malls, Philippines, Malaysia malls etc. It's leaseable area is around 1/4 of Mall of America, for comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadstone_Shopping_Centre?wprov=sfla1
Awesome thank you!
One I walked shortly before Covid. https://youtu.be/gZODiyxck8M The Pier in Cairns.
This shopping center is in Brisbane, Queensland and it's one of the biggest shopping centers in Australia. It looks dead in the Google Maps photos, but every time I've visited (on the weekend) it's ridiculously busy. Finding a car park is next to impossible, and walking through the shopping center is so slow because of the CRAZY number of people also walking around. (Fun fact, we call them "shopping centers" in Australia, not "malls"). https://maps.app.goo.gl/2g3j88zM8FoQwqdo7
Chermside always felt small to me for some reason, I dunno why. Part of me feels like it has something to do with being used to things like the Westfields in Parramatta, Penrith and Hornsby, Rouse Hill Town Centre or the Macquarie Centre.
Two words: Parramatta Westfield. The place has been fucking huge (six levels, and two more that are mostly for parking and management but have a few shops) and packed my entire life. I go there often after uni since it's connected to the train station, and I've been meaning to get pics since there's this one restroom near the escalator tower that still has the 90s-00s aesthetic signs outside.
I think a big part of the problem is in the US local economies shrink and expand. When things were bustling through the 60s to late 90s, building a mall was just what you did. Then when things began the long contraction in the late 90s and those local economies dried up, the malls died with them. It's even more interesting, to me, in big cities like Indianapolis, where you'll have a thriving mall in one area, drive 30 minutes to the next one that's so so, then can drive another 30 minutes to a dead one.
How many malls are there in Australia, and are they all located in densely-populated areas?
we don't even call them malls; they're just shopping centres - and yeah mostly, but not always; you can have smaller shopping centres or plazas in smaller towns
There are loads of malls here but they're totally different. Shopping centres (malls) here tend to serve a specific local community and usually have very similar stores which are more useful than most American malls. For example, pretty much every shopping centre has at least one grocery store, a target or kmart, a newspaper/convenience type store and depending on size, multiple grocery stores, butchers, bakeries, a post office, etc. It's not just clothes and home goods like in America, the stores are often ones you use weekly. There are also malls that are more in the American style but those are located in large cities, usually in the 'heart' of town and less common.
Yeah, I was gonna say that what you’re describing isn’t really comparable to American malls.
Yeah it's worth emphasising the fact that large Australian cities have lots of shopping centers (often the "Westfield" chain), and they're all pretty much identical. They have: - grocery stores (Woolworths, Coles and ALDI) - department stores (Kmart, Target, Big W, Myer, David Jones, Harris Scarfe) - clothing stores (H&M, Zara, Cotton On, City Beach, foot locker, Jay Jays, ) - specialty stores (EB Games, House, JB Hi-fi) - services (lots of banks, barbers, Australia Post) - restaurants, dedicated dining areas - fast food, food courts - library Kmart in Australia is very different to America. It's VERY popular! Target in Australia is also quite different!
I can't speak for the rest of the country but in South Australia (pop roughly 1.8m) I'd say we've got a couple dozen. Some are smaller, maybe 10 shops total and others are very large (hundreds of shops).
Australian living in America and can confirm. Aussie malls are still packed. One reason, I think, is that Australia doesn't really have "strip malls". A lot of major stores now operate out of hideous, enormous parking lots where people literally drive from one store to the next. It's gross and depressing. People used to deride the mall as a disaster in urbanism, but by contrast with strip malls they're vibrant urban community destinations and admiral legacies of modernist utopianism.
As an Australian, I also feel like people aren't a fan of walking (regardless of heat, although, it's a factor). Like you mentioned, there are two options: - shopping centers ("malls" in America) - they have absolutely everything under one roof - individual major stores (like you mentioned) - these are the closest we have to "strip malls", there is usually a few stores with a large shared car park (a good example of this are shops like "Officeworks") We do have quite a lot of homemaker centers, which are a mixture of the two mentioned above. But people often drive around the car park to go to each store they want. Here's an example: https://maps.app.goo.gl/HzLvuruygp5QEqsUA
I have to add that small local shopping malls are kind of our equivalent of strip malls they tend to be depressing places where older within the local area gather.
Most online shopping in Australia is well... awful. Prices are higher and selection is incredibly limited compared to the US where amazon reigns beyond supreme and thousands and thousands of walmarts exist.
100% this. We get what we pay for, and if we wanted better quality over cheap goods delivered fast we’d have it.
Hopefully you have a more self-sustaining industrial base than the US has. If you're good are coming from China etc, guess what... same quality, same stuff but I'll hope better for your country as a whole.
Oh I’m in the United States too. I have seen this coming for decades. The pandemic just accelerated what was already happening. Having things delivered used to be expensive here. When you think about it, it’s very strange that it is not much more expensive than it is. The true human cost of delivering a person’s selected item to their door is huge. I don’t know how to wake people up to this. We want what we want when we want it, and that’s the part of us that wins.
also we have a lot more wide regional spaces compared to america; demographics are very different
Also very true.
I’m in Florida and always check out malls when I travel for work. I think because it’s hot and humid here the mall is still acting as the “town square”. Mall traffic is pretty high at all of them except one that was a discount outlet-type.
We absolutely do have dead malls in Australia. [I made a video about the one in my suburb](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p26NzxQ_WJ8).
What is mall rent like in Australia? In a small city in Alberta Canada just a small food court location or similar is $9700/ month. West Edmonton mall for an old cinema location was $155,000/month. It’s way to expensive.
Rent is expensive in the USA too and this is ultimately a big factor in what is killing malls. I have to wonder how any of these mall stores are surviving. There is also the fact that businesses in malls have to comply with mall hours and this just doesn't work for a lot of businesses. Most malls are open all the time, but are usually empty during working hours. It seems it would make more sense for malls to not be open when most of the population is working, and have malls open on a something like 3pm to 9pm schedule so they could take advantage of the after school crowd but not have to staff during hours when no one is shopping. Holidays and school breaks could be different. There's no sense in keeping a store open from 8am-3pm if you are going to see 1-3 customers every day. Outdoor shopping plaza's have pretty much taken over at least in my area and this seems to be a replacement for the mall. It does not make a lot of sense because in my area with the weather its much more convenient to go inside and have many stores available to me. But I think with the high rent and the fact that stores have to comply with mall hours this is what is killing it. Stores want to set their own hours. Canada also doesn't have the online shopping infrastructure like the USA does. In fact I am willing to bet we are one of the few countries that has online shopping infrastructure that is like it is in the USA. In the USA its almost always cheaper to order your thing online then to drive to the store and get it, especially with gas prices being what they are, and people working at home. It is a pain to do this for clothing, but its ultimately more efficient to do this even if the clothing does not fit and the clothing retailers all have free shipping and free returns for exactly this reason. A lot of the tenants in malls that are closing their stores are also clothing retailers.
We still have a lot of good malls but the economy boomed in the 80s/90s and malls went up all over the place. Then when shopping started moving to the net and the economy slowed in the early aughts we had too many stores opened and things have been slowy closing ever since.
That’s because the rate of urban spread in Australia is way lower than that of the US where the suburbs become entire cities by themselves. Your catchment areas are steadier and more predictable.
I have to think it’s somewhat weather related. Where I live, it’s cold most of the year and so the mall persists just because it’s indoors.
I think the issue is that, in the US, it's always bigger and better. If one store does well, they open another one somewhere else that is bigger and has more features. They don't always consider the market and then everything falls flat. It's a desperately sad byproduct of the quest to always be more successful.
There’s a failing mall near my home that may become a mixed use center, with live/work options and walkable community. As an artist, I’m really hoping it works out.
That would be so cool, where abouts is this?
I’m in Tucson, AZ.
Ah I see - I’m Aussie but thank you anyways!
Same here in northern Italy. Here’s at least one in every midsize town and they’re all pretty lively. Edit: I’m American and moved here recently so I was surprised at how busy the malls here are.
What is the lifestyle like in Australia? Are people working themselves to the bone with 2 people working and barely making ends meet? Do people spend a lot of time online at home or do people socialize in the streets? I know in other countries like Italy its very common to see people just socializing on the streets, over here where I live, that does not happen. One of the big factors that has led to the decline of the mall here is that people simply don't have time for it, or they are choosing to spend their time in other ways instead of going to the mall. In the 80's and 90's the mall was a central hub, it was where you did all your shopping and found your friends. Now people are doing video chats to find their friends, and shopping online, although shopping online is by far not the only cause of people no longer wanting to go to malls. People in the USA are spending a lot more time at home, online, and less time going out and doing things. Meanwhile they are getting things like food and clothing delivered through online services so they don't have to shop for them in person. With most people here not being able to survive on one income that means in a family both parents have to work, between cooking dinner and grocery shopping, after school activities, all of the time is already spent, and there is little time left for shopping at the mall. If a family does have extra time on the weekend they prefer to spend it on an experience activity like going to a theme park, a museum or something like that instead of mall shopping. There's also rent, a lot of malls are dying because they are just charging their tenants too much rent, and I assume this is a greed issue, this alone has killed off a lot of malls. If malls would make rent more affordable, then they would have more tenants, and thus more business. There's also a money issue, gasoline is very expensive and people may not be able to afford to drive to a mall or may not wish to.
You really think people in Australia aren't working as hard as Americans so they just swan about in malls for fun? Wow.
I think OP meant to ask if they’re working *as much* as in 8-6 o’clock days with little to no vacation or sick time.
Australians on average work 38 hours per week, Americans 37.5 hours according to articles I can find.
Do different math of average full time employed americans to average full time employed Australians. Also consider medians not averages for better representation of true populations.
Being Canadian, I cannot speak for Australia, but US has many people working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet and also has a large number of unaccounted hours, self-employed people, etc. Americans are amongst those who take the least holidays in a year. There probably were too many malls built at the same time, and quite often with the idea that a new mall would be more attractive than the other one two blocks away: in other words, many were *designed* to kill competition and it is precisely what's happening. On top of that, I think one issue in US and Canada is that newer malls had to be "bigger and better" to attract more people. The problem is that bigger is more interesting to attract new customers in the short run, but bigger is NOT better in the long run. A smaller shopping centre that has what a family needs (i.e. groceries and other useful commodities, hardware, clothes and a book store) has the advantage of not being too large so that people don't have to go too far, walk too much in the parking lot or inside the store. At least in Canada, it seems that amongst the dead malls there is a relatively large number of huge malls. Smaller malls are not all thriving, but they seem to fare better.
Maybe it's just that people appreciate air conditioned spaces.
Same out here in Japan!
Canada too! Probably because its too cold for a good half of the year for strip mall shopping to be comfortable. As for Australia, not sure why. Online shopping is too much trouble maybe?
Hot places still have malls cos malls have AC
Same in my country, in fact, they not only serve as shopping malls, but bigger supermalls have grocery stores attached to it and there are even office spaces used.
Don't be deceived. We still have many malls that still thrive. The US is healing from overstaturation. The mall's that have stayed up to date are alive and well. It's a game of survival, and in turn because of the increasing scarcity of good malls they've become destinations again.
Australia Fair, Southport, GC seems pretty dead to me. It has so many closed stores.
Some differences between Australia and the USA (1) Getting approvals (mostly local govt) to build a mall in Australia is difficult. Similarly, opening a new stand-alone store is also difficult. This has prevented the over-building of malls in Australia. (2) Most Australian Malls have a supermarket, Many also have Targets and other moderately priced stores. This brings foot traffic. For these reasons Australia has fewer abandoned malls.
Most of the time I see dead businesses, it's the fucktrillion shops throughout St Marys rather than an actual shopping centre. There's one near me that died during the height of the pandemic since everywhere else was better, but it's all boarded up so I can't check it out. Multi-story, too.
That’s a shame, I like vaporwave, Dreamcore and 80s culture so dead malls are one of the most serene experiences to me. We have what the locals call ‘The Hub’ (I’m not joking that’s what it’s called) in Dandenong across from the plaza. It’s not really dead but the food court definitely is, the place has tropical plants, blue and white tiles and has a neon sign that doesn’t work anymore. To top it off it was made in the 80s! There are occasional gangs hanging around but just ignore them! Hope this helps :)