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Originally Posted by Crawford
Santana Row/Valley Fair are basically the "downtown" for SV. People still congregate, and regionally dominant malls still thrive.
They're still malls, though. No substitute for organic urban growth.
Also, totally anecdotal, but I believe immigrants and other newcomers haven't discarded malls like most longtime Americans. You see malls perform best when there are lots of non-natives and intl. visitors (NYC, Miami, LA, Bay Area). The really "All American" places with purely local demand (Portland, St. Louis, Cincy) are where malls really seem to struggle. Outside of the U.S. malls are still generally "cool" and signal upward mobility, youth and aspiration.
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I don't know about all that. There are still malls in places like Thousand Oaks, Temecula and Mission Viejo. Dallas has a bunch of huge malls too. They were just overbuilt in the 90s in places that couldn't support that level of retail, and then e-commerce finished them off, but in thriving suburbs around the country they are still going strong. It's true that the indoor variety has fallen out of favor in fair-weather locales. Open-air or semi open-air malls like the Grove, Westfield Century City and Irvine Spectrum seem to be the most popular around here.