I miss malls. I miss the dynamic nature of them. I miss exploring them. I miss seeing all the things that people could buy. I miss the atmosphere. I miss the fountain you throw your pennies in. I miss meeting so many different people. I miss the escalators. I miss the joy of going into the mall pet shop and seeing the animals warm up to you. I miss sitting at the food courts, eating my weirdly quality pizza and taking in the ambiance. Hell, I miss getting lost in malls.
One of the things that feels like a stab in the heart as an aspiring parent is I will never be able to take my kids to the mall and have them experience the same experience. I look at malls now and want to cry. Look at me, a commie crying over a pillar of capitalism. That’s how much of a friend malls were to me, yet nobody I know will say they relate.
I’m not sure malls really are a “pillar of capitalism”, something akin to stores will exist in virtually any economic system, because ultimately their function in the economy is to distribute the results of production to individuals that need it, regardless of who exactly owns or profits off them, and the need for a function like that is virtually universal.
What malls are really is an attempt to recreate the experience of a busy pedestrian street, for a place that is heavy on car use and so doesn’t have many of those spaces. Hence you get a bunch of shops together in a space that lets one conveniently walk between them.