Those are also the "mall rat" generations, so it'd be pretty fitting lol.

Not even renovated, just set me up in a hot topic.

As a GenX, I would prefer seeing them made into some sort of public space? We are losing a lot of that, at least where I live. Indoor space in particular.

counterargument; malls, arcades, and bookstores should come back in style because they were amazing and we don't know what we missed until it's gone.

As a millennial I can tell you that most millennials I know wouldn't want this but instead make it a place for none corporation and community events and such. A public place where your not forced to buy things where can just exist with others even if you have zero money and accessible to all genders and disabilities and races.

And yes retrofit part of it for people who need to get back on there feet, and homeless people.

If we could retrofit them into homeless shelters we could but it would require rebuilding mostly everything as malls are designed for stores not housing people (for instance the bathrooms are not private and not easily accessible if you live somewhere in it)

This isn't a too shabby of an idea. It probably won't be used but a mix of stores and homes in one building sounds great.

In some places they're already doing it to revitalize the majority of the mall, convert a section and suddenly you've got people around 24/7 that want services.

But keep the appearance of a mall.
That way when we all have Alzheimer's from micro plastics, we can wander around it and feel young

Stahp, I'm not even 40 yet.

mall walks!

This sounds like such bad idea. Just demolish them.

Knock these things down and plant trees and stuff.

While we're at it knock all the corporate 9to5 office work buildings where all the employees can work from home and plant trees and stuff there too.

Trees and ponds and natural parks and shit, hiking trails...etc.

As a millenial, all I want is the LAN party old folks home.

That would be really good, but this idea has been explored and unfortunately it is only viable on a very narrow amount of buildings. Most malls aren't properly built to be housing and the costs of adapting them for housing exceed the cost of just building new housing elsewhere. And the costs of tearing it down and rebuilding are even greater. Overall, Malls are economic net negatives for communities, all single use infrastructure constructions are.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the person who came up with malls WANTED them to be just as you described... Not some shopping centre thing

I've seen some concepts for mall-like communities based around retirement homes and elementary schools. Add a library, some shops, and other services, and you're off to a great start.

The old-but-still-able folks can serve as crossing guards, read books to kids, play games with them, perhaps help with coaching or other tasks, etc.. The young kids benefit from the wisdom and time spent with good role models, the retirees get much-needed social interaction, structure, and purpose.

A man can dream.

As other people have mentioned, this can be a hard problem.

However, malls are typically surrounded by massive amounts of space used for parking. There is a plan for the largest mall in my region to convert all of that land into residential spaces, 2000 apartments. The parking will be moving underground.

Seems like a decent idea to me.

I'm down and claiming the candy store in 113!

Can't have residential buildings in an area zoned for commercial use.

Wait you guys are retiring?

It's funny you think millenials can afford to retire at 60

Cool idea but lack of natural light could be an issue.

Maybe 10 or so years ago, was a real push to convert old malls into apartments or low income housing. Turns out it's not that easy. Those buildings were built with minimal plumbing, just a few public restrooms and limited water service for the food court. There's just not enough water/sewer to supply more than a small handful of apartments. You'd have to tear up significant portions of the building to run all new plumbing for all the kitchens & bathrooms. And that assumes the underlying city infrastructure that runs to the mall could even support the new water & sewage demands in the first place.

I'll grant you, it is a cool idea. It's just not nearly as simple as it sounds.

If my retirement home has Dance Dance Revolution, I may just have to get myself a new hip.

Nah. Vaporwave themed laser tag arenas. Let's go.

If I could buy a large abandoned mall, I would absolutely love to turn it into an affordable community housing complex where shops can be set up alongside the housing units. There's definitely more than enough space in any mall I've ever been to in America where you could easily renovate and turn stores into either single unit housing or maybe 2-3 units (big stores like JCPenney or Sears not included in this count because you could turn those into tens upon tens of units, assuming they're as big as the ones at the mall near where I live).