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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that shopping malls are still very popular in other countries. Hong Kong, for instance, is practically one big mall. In, e.g., Poland, France, the Czech Republic, or Slovenia, just about every town has its own mall, and the larger cities often have malls within the tourist district itself. (e.g. this monster in the middle of Prague: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladium_(Prague) )

The decline of the mall is an American thing, and its reasons are not entirely clear. I'd say there are a few plausible contributing factors: Most other countries lack all-in-one stores like WalMart/Target. To put it gently, Americans are... well... larger than other people, and they're less likely to care about what they wear or how their clothes fit, so they're perhaps more likely to buy clothes online rather than in shops. America has a low-level crime/safety problem that most Asian/European countries do not.

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One notable difference I think with many malls in Europe and other countries, compared to America, is that they tend to be integrated with the surrounding town/shopping area. They are less likely to be a standalone place you drive to. Both of the malls I grew up near were like that, you could park at the mall, then walk out of the mall into the busy high street. Rather than feeling like a completely separate entity it was a continuation that also had the food court.

I know there were big out of town malls in the UK, but going there was a special trip, and then they were always a disappointment, despite the grandeur.

The word mall used to mean street. The original malls were streets with stores, not a single structure. The old scheme was a natural evolution of the local market and grew or shrunk with demand. Todays malls are large rental properties populated by shops, with little ability to adapt as markets change.

Clearly here what's meant by mall is "shopping center," modeled on the first one in the 1950s in the twin cities, not places like the National Mall in D.C.

I recall one of those; right in the centre, as you describe. It was open by the mid 1980s, IIRC. It had a cafe and various pleasant seating areas within, such as this: https://www.peterboroughimages.co.uk/currys-store-queensgate... Last time I looked these had all been removed, and the main "flagship" store closed down; certainly no longer the exciting day out I remember from when it was new. Perhaps this is due to the increasing number of retail parks which have appeared in the area this century.

I moved away from the UK in 2007 and I understand there have been quite significant changes to the high street in general over there since then. I live in NZ now and the malls around here are integrated like I described. They're also quite small because population.

I will call bullshit on my own original post though. I used to live near Santa Rosa CA and that had a mall that spilt into the street stores that I had forgotten about, so it's not actually a difference between the US and the rest of the world. My general point though is I think those are friendlier malls than the out of town variety.

That's true, but I'd say that in Europe the ratio is close to 50/50. Prague, for instance, has a few malls in the city proper, and several more (like, e.g., "Europark" and "Fashion Arena") that are primarily accessible via car or public transit. I wouldn't say that one type is in decline whereas the other type isn't.

>The decline of the mall is an American thing, and its reasons are not entirely clear.

I remember an article in the Economist a few years ago that said America had nine times the square footage of mall space compared to the UK. If they have a decline it's probably because they overbuilt in the past.

Was that adjusted for population size? For the US also has 6x the population, and fewer "high streets" or walkable city/town shopping districts. The US also has, in a general sense, more space to build.

It probably was. Looks like the US has 5x the retail space per capita vs the UK, all in: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1058852/retail-space-per...

>Was that adjusted for population size?

Yes, I should have said per capita.

> Most other countries lack all-in-one stores like WalMart/Target

That's patently untrue. The "hypermarché" has been a staple in France since at least the 1980's for example. They're also ubiquitous in Portugal and Spain. They're also a thing in Germany (though I get the impression there that they are less popular and came later than in France).

And those are only the countries I have direct experience with.

Yep, they’re all over Eastern Europe as well. Both in traditional CBD and American-style drive and park stand-alone formats.

Aviapark is the largest in Europe with over 500 shops:

https://youtu.be/DI4RyT4lA9M?si=r2EFJdpTrFdMaLKI

Finland also. Extremely popular. And I think their main revenue source is food and such and not actually all the other stuff like clothing or electronics. On other hand they also have the biggest selection of food.

Yup, in Ireland we don't really have them (due to a legal restriction on the absolute size of retail stores; amusingly, this has a special carve-out to allow Ikea to exist), and that's notably weird.

In Argentina too. You can enter at a Supermercado (supermarket) and buy groceries, TVs, clothes, car tires, etc.

They are also popular in South America. Comparatively speaking - at least in relation to South America - buying in person is still more reliable that ordering things by mail. Not only you can see the product you're getting in person, you know who you can talk to in case of problems (online vendors can, and often do, disappear).

Regarding "Americans are...larger than other people and they're less likely to care" this is just a stereotype. While it is true Americans are less formal in clothing, and thus more likely to wear casual clothes, people still spend an enormous amount of time "trying to look good". My wife, a very fashion-oriented person, buys clothes online and keeps returning them until she gets what she wants.

At least in Asia, many people live in apartment blocks which are built directly on top of a mall. So those malls usually local amenities, but then also serve as metro stations and bus hubs to outlying areas. It's the way that the lifestyle is structured that creates this system, and it's hard to see how one might apply the american style suburbs and single homes to this system.

Also modern asian malls are generally much more luxurious than western malls, very clean, air conditioned, with 3 or more floors, ice rinks, pop up events, clean toilets, etc. Many of your local malls of a city would be comparable to the best of an American city, let alone the best of that respective city.

Exactly right. The malls in Asia fit the lifestyle very well, being well integrated into the daily commute and easily accessible to so many within the community. These malls are some of the nicest places you can go and offer tons of restaurants options, boutiques etc that make each one feel unique. It's incredible how much better it is than what we have in the states IMO.

When working in Shanghai I had to go to an office in an outlying district, where the subway station was below a mall, and the way in and out of the subway was through a MacDonalds, walking past the queues waiting to order. The first time I went I was sure that couldn't be right, but it was.

In Brazil a lot of shops closed during the pandemic and it seems like they continue to close, although slower. Some of the smaller malls in my state are nearly empty.

The larger chains consolidated inside the bigger malls, even closing street shops.

Galleries are all but dead: some of them live off cafés and parking if they are well located. This I've seen in Uruguay too.

I think the only way they can survive is to pivot to entertainment and co-working.

There's a nice quiet food hall near me that fills up daily with people working (one café gives you all the coffee you want for about US$3.50 a day).

Right now I'm in the suburbs of Helsinki, and the Prisma hypermarket in the nearby mall is 19600 square meters (~210k square feet). About 1/3 of that is for groceries and 2/3 for everything else. Some of the bigger malls have two or even three competing hypermarkets, though they are usually not as large as the one we have here.

We don't have a Walmart where I live in the US, and the nearest Target is only ~100k square feet.

I think you may be being mislead by the sheer _amount_ of retail in the US. The US has 10 times the retail square footage of Germany, say. Even with the recent decline in retail. The US would have to close literally thousands of malls before it comes anywhere close to the density of most European countries. Shopping malls are actually far more popular in the US than Europe; just not the _ten times_ more popular that would be required to justify the amount of space given over to them.

> America has a low-level crime/safety problem that most Asian/European countries do not.

I do wonder how much of this is more _anxiety_ than an actual safety problem. American cities are, in general, somewhat more dangerous than European cities, violent-crime-wise, but for most it's not separate worlds.

Shopying malls are still popular here too. You can cherry pick many examples of failed or failing malls. However there are also many malls doing great.

Malls in Poland are very different, they are expensive and they have almost only big brands shops that can survive predatory practices of mall operators. Those are not malls of US type that used to have a lot of independent "mom and pap" shops.

>The decline of the mall is an American thing, and its reasons are not entirely clear.

As an American, I can tell you why:

* They are fucking filthy. Literally every mall I visited back in the day fucking stank. I fucking hated them, my nose died every time.

* Their prices aren't competitive (note: they don't have to be cheap, I don't mind expensive goods), their selection is poor, and the quality of the goods are questionable.

Between online shopping and physical stores located outside of malls with better prices, selections, and quality there just aren't any reasons to bother going to those hellscapes.

WTF are you talking about? Your crime rate it's far warse than European metrics. Add shootings on top and that's a nightmare.

On Wallmarts and such, don't make me laugh. Ever heard of Carrefour? Lidl/Aldi? Eroski? Mercadona? Just a few names in Spain. Big hypermarkets outside the town/city.

We also have American shaped malls, too, but they are often placed in the middle of a city.

You misunderstood. I mentioned that American crime rates are higher than in Europe, and that this might be part of the problem.

And you've never been to a WalMart or Target if you think that something like Lidl is remotely comparable. Offhand, I'd say that the American versions of those stores are anywhere from 3-20x larger, and I'm not at all exaggerating.

I feel like this is an assumption made by folks outside the US that possibility of crime factors into every decision we make. Perhaps in some areas (SF Bay Area, Chicago, LA, NYC) it’s more top of mind, but I never think about it and frankly the only crime against me I have ever encountered was when I traveled outside the US.

Not LIDL or ALDI, ok, but Carrefour isn't that small, not even close. Or Max Center, from Eroski.

According to what I'm seeing on the web, Carrefour stores range between 5,000 sqm to 15,000 sqm (55,000 sqft to 165,000 sq ft), while a Walmart Supercenter is around 260,000 sq ft (1.5 times to 4.7 times larger).

There is Aldi in the US. Trust me when I say that it isn't comparable to Wal-mart.

Walmart is more like a bunch of stores. You can buy car tires, clothing, food, a playstation, vitamins, diapers, curtains, house paint, alcohol, tobacco, a gun, a coffee pot, a mop and a sewing machine in one stop.

Now, I understand that I'm in Norway, an immigrant, and haven't been all over europe, but I've not seen such a place that sells such a variety under one roof and one brand name.

And about the crime rates: Malls in the US started their downturn years ago. It wasn't the crime rate - I suspect it is just the assortment of stores and location and the increase in online shopping. Unlike here, I'm not usually going to find a grocery store in a US mall - traditionally, they didn't tend to sell practical items at malls. It generally isn't going to be convenient. And ordering online probably is cheaper, considering the travel time and stuff.

Big Carrefour stores being placed a km away from any town/city? Because they work in the same exact way say as the biggie hypermarket complex I can go from where I live in just 10 minutes.

That hypermarket (not Carrefour, another one) it's composed of several buildings, they even have a renewed VR arcade gaming place and several cinema rooms.

You can buy books, computers, clothes, groceries, tyres, courtains, tools, whatever.

> There is Aldi in the US. Trust me when I say that it isn't comparable to Wal-mart.

While they may not exist in the US, I think Aldi does have 'hypermarkets' (ie Walmart-type things) in some countries. Other brands certainly do, and would cover most of that stuff (though, well, not guns).

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