Retail experts have long sounded the alarm on malls in the US.
But malls are not going extinct, they are merely adapting to a new environment. In fact, many have reported robust occupancy levels and bigger crowds than before the pandemic, according to a recent market analysis from Coresight Research.
Indoor malls are gonna have a resurgence as temperatures get higher and higher and it’s no longer feasible to spend time outdoors for prolonged periods.
I’ve been to the middle east (Oman). So many malls there for basically that exact reason. And a friend of mine grew up in Bahrain and said the same.
Same thing in Thailand as well. Malls will never go extinct because they’re air conditioned areas that anyone can enter.
If they can afford the power bill for all of that A/C maybe.
That’s definitely gonna be a locational thing. In my area (near Toronto, Canada), I’d say malls are more popular in the winter because they offer an escape from the cold and there isn’t that much to do in the winter, anyway. Summers in my area aren’t going to get hot enough to change that any time soon.
But for something like Arizona, it’s really easy to picture how that would be the case, cause summers there are murderously hot.
I wonder how such large buildings have such amazing AC, anyway? Most malls and big box stores have god tier AC.
If you cover everything in asphalt, yes, that’s what’s going to happen.