At their peak, there were approximately like two thousand enclosed moles in the us. In the 19 nineties, which was basically peak mall, there were a hundred and forty new malls being built per year. More people want to shop in smaller stores, even if those aren't necessarily independently owned. And then there's also just a greater income disparity.
No teenager in America in the 1980s could avoid the gravitational pull of the mall, not even author Alexandra Lange. In her new book, Meet Me by the Fountain, Lange writes about how malls were conceptually born out of a lack of space for people to convene in American suburbs. Despite the fact indoor shopping malls are no longer in their heyday, malls have not gone away completely. Lange writes about the history of mall culture, and how the mall became a ubiquitous part of American life.
Meet Us by the Fountain