03

how might we rethink our malls

A typical understanding of mall success is closely tied to financial returns and visitorship. We propose a more comprehensive ‘Mall Spirit Structure’ framework to understand and evaluate a mall’s health, which takes into account both retailers’ and visitors’ sentiments, and opportunities for the physical form of the mall to adapt to changes.






This framework allows us to holistically appraise the range of feasible actions for a mall’s continuation, or in some instances, a graceful end. Framing the future of malls as cycling between ‘life’ and ‘death’ allows us to develop a spectrum of actions that straddle the 3 stages of revitalization, rehabilitation, and decommission, each expressing differently their functions as community-centric sites of enhanced economic and culturalparticipation, anchored within a ‘15-min city’ network relationship.