“The key is to have an integrated design that really mixes everything successfully. However, he cautions that developers have to start with the recognition that they’re building an authentic urban place, not just a higher density suburb. “They are the low-hanging fruit in suburban transformation, because the rest of the suburbs can be very hard to redevelop,” says Toderian. A 2017 report by Colliers International emphasised that cities should focus on malls as opposed to other sites for urban intensification, as they have the capacity to sustain additional density. Malls are ideal sites for residential development, as they have the land footprint and they’re already conveniently linked to transit. Shopping malls at their heart are consumer centres shaped around consumer behaviour, so one landlord can more quickly and easily build a mallscape that better reflects what their shoppers want, such as an improved food court or entertainment centres.īut the next big trend in shopping centres doesn’t just involve rethinking retail, but land use as a whole – and it comes back to Gruen’s vision of malls as mixed-use sites. Malls have an advantage over high streets in that they’re owned by a single landlord.

“The low-hanging fruit in suburban transformation” “We don’t wait for them to fail when there’s a bigger opportunity ahead,” says Toderian.

Instead of waiting for shopping malls to die, Canada’s urban planners applied the same principle to successful shopping malls to make them even more successful. But what Canada has done goes beyond that. urban planners started to pioneer a strategy called Greyfields to Goldfields, which used new ideas to redevelop failing malls. There are online “dead mall” communities on sites like Reddit with thousands of subscribers, who both mourn the loss of malls and dedicate edgy roadtrips and photo shoots to them.Ī couple of decades ago, U.S. Today, “dead malls” are a phenomenon in the U.S. Unfettered competition ultimately translated into failed malls, says Toderian. “They literally would allow new malls to spring up just down the road and right across the street from malls that already didn't have a large enough trade area,” says Toderian. Toderian was Vancouver’s Chief Planner between 20 and is the founding president of the Council for Canadian Urbanism. Part of America’s problem is that they had too much retail space to begin with, according to urban planner Brent Toderian. The busiest shopping mall in North America is Toronto’s Eaton Centre, which receives 57.3 million visitors annually - more than Walt Disney World and about as many as Times Square in New York City, according to Patterson. “We've never seen a time in our history where landlords have been investing in their malls like they have been in the past five to seven years,” says retail analyst Craig Patterson, who wrote the study.Ĭanada’s shopping malls are outperforming their U.S. Last year, 17 out of 20 of Canada’s top malls saw increases in sales per square foot compared to 2017.

Building on successĬanada’s shopping centres are thriving, according to the 2018 Canadian Shopping Centre Study. In 2017, Credit Suisse predicted that up to a quarter of America’s malls could close by 2022.īut on the Canadian side of the border, it’s a different story. Gruen also didn’t live to see the slow death of the American mall. Indeed, by the time of his death in 1980, he was horrified by what the American mall had become: islands of badly planned retail in grey seas of parking spaces.

Gruen did not see his dream come to fruition. The mall would be a place for recreation, education, and socialization – an attractive, self-contained, walkable community hub. He imagined shopping malls as mixed-use sites, with homes, schools, offices, shops, medical centres and more. Gruen had the vision of a modern urbanist. “They can provide the needed place and opportunity for participation in modern community life that the ancient Greek Agora, the Medieval Market Place and our own Town Squares provided in the past.” “Shopping centres can fill an existing void,” Gruen wrote in 1960. When Austrian architect Victor Gruen pioneered the American shopping mall in the mid-20 th century, he saw it as more than just a place to shop.