The rise and slow, painful fall of the indoor mall
Lesson summary
Hi everyone, it’s Jeff and this is another Plain English. Plain English is where we help you upgrade your skills in English. And we do this with stories about current events and trending topics. By listening here, you’ll learn new words and ideas. You’ll get thinking in English. And at PlainEnglish.com, we have all the support you need to upgrade your skills in your new language.
So, today’s story is about the mall. Actually, Thursday’s story is about the mall, too. Today, we’re going to talk about how the indoor mall became such a big part of American culture…and how its time has perhaps passed. On Thursday, we’ll take a look into something called a “zombie” mall—that’s a mall that’s not quite dead, but not exactly alive and well , either.
In the second half of every episode, we talk about an English expression. Today’s is “wander around.” So listen up for that—it comes right at the beginning of the story, and then I’ll show you how to use it later on.
This is lesson 656, so that means the full lesson resources are at PlainEnglish.com/656. I think we’re ready. Let’s get going.
The rise and fall of the indoor mall
In “Mallrats,” a movie from 1995, two teenage boys are dumped by their girlfriends. To kill the time , and to heal the wounds, they wander around the mall together. In “Terminator 2,” assassin robots attack a character at the arcade. In “Wonder Woman 1984,” the superhero saves the day in a mall. If you only watched “Mean Girls” or “Clueless,” you might think the mall was a place for girls—but if you had also seen “Superbad” or “Mallrats,” you’d know that’s just not true.
Oh, the mall. We take it for granted now: it’s in movies, TV shows, books, songs, and advertisements—not to mention in our own daily lives. But the indoor mall is relatively new. The first fully enclosed shopping mall in the U.S. opened only in 1956. “Southdale Center” in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota, had multiple levels of shops, an airy interior, fountains, and a courtyard.
It was the first of many. By the 1980s, the mall had become the center of suburban social life. Malls had everything a shopper wanted. Most were two stories, totally enclosed, with heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. These malls featured large “anchor” department stores like Macy’s, JC Penney, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, and Sears. At these stores, you could buy a lawnmower or a tuxedo, a new mattress or an expensive perfume.
Outside the anchors, around the perimeter of the mall, you found specialty stores. They sold clothing, jewelry, music, accessories, gifts, books, electronics, and more. Each mall had a large food court, with fast-food chains and a few sit-down restaurants.
The mall was also a place to “hang out.” Senior citizens would get there as soon as the doors opened and they would walk laps around the vast corridors, as the individual shops were still opening for the day. Parents would drop kids off at the mall, where they would spend hours walking around, socializing, and looking in the windows. Arcades provided a cheap form of entertainment.
Malls were a staple of suburban life. Most of them were built well outside city centers, close to where people lived and where there was plenty of room to build massive parking lots. The U.S. went through a large period of suburbanization in the post-war period. Many people left the city center to buy homes with yards and driveways. The mall was inextricably linked to the age of the automobile and the single-family suburban home.
By the early 2000s , though, things started to change. People started shopping online. New “big-box” stores like Walmart and Target offered a cheaper alternative to pricey department stores like Macy’s and Sears. Cities, which for decades had been plagued with crime, were becoming safer.
At the same time , it became clear that too many enclosed malls had been built. America had far more retail space per resident than other developed countries had. Older malls were starting to show their age: they looked dilapidated.
Mall developers leaned into a few trends. First, they started building “lifestyle centers.” These are a hybrid between a traditional enclosed mall and a city-like shopping district. Lifestyle centers are open-air, even in cold-weather places. They have better landscaping and more interesting design. They have more sit-down restaurants and entertainment options, like movie theaters and comedy clubs.
Next, developers started experimenting with new types of tenants for the traditional, enclosed malls. People don’t want to go “hang out at the mall” like they used to . So mall owners started looking for new ways to get people in the door. They recruited movie theaters, fitness centers, and even grocery stores to take the big anchor spots.
For many properties, that only forestalled the inevitable. The big anchors—Macy’s, Sears, and countless regional chains—they’ve been closing stores for years. Federated, the parent company of Macy’s, once had over 1,000 stores nationwide. Now, it operates half that. At its peak, Sears operated 3,500 stores in the United States: today, it has twelve.
Culturally speaking, the mall is in decline. It’s not where people want to spend their time anymore. Smartphones and social media have given young people a new outlet for socializing. Streaming has opened up new forms of entertainment at home. Younger people prioritize experiences over material goods.
Some malls are doing just fine. But many are struggling. On Thursday’s story, we’ll talk about what happens to a mall when most of the people are gone.
Jeff’s take
I was born in the 1980s, right in the middle of the mall’s dominance in the popular culture. But I didn’t live close enough to an indoor mall to experience it the way you see it in movies. The nearest one to my house was the Danbury Fair Mall. It’s actually a good mall and I did like it as a kid. There’s a big carousel in the food court. It’s huge—it has everything. But it was a little too far—it was about a 30-minute drive from my house, so it was just a little far to figure in my daily or weekly life.
Anyway, the mall in pop culture—it’s prominent in the movies from that time period, especially about teenagers. “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Clueless,” “Back to the Future.” There was even that movie called “Mallrats”…and later a song .
How times change. I told you a while back how much I liked “Better Call Saul .” No spoilers, but a character works in a Cinnabon restaurant in an enclosed mall. The job is boring, lifeless, and monotonous. That’s a far cry from how the mall is shown in movies from the 80s and 90s.
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