But really, it seems like you want a town with more parks.
My main complaint about malls is how _loud_ they are: visually and auditory-ly (someone please tell me what the right word is). Malls are crowded, adorned in bright, garish colors, filled with stale food court food smells. There is very little seating other than at food courts, water fountains are hidden far away in some corner, loud music plays almost all the time, or it's noisy because of all the people. In sunny Silicon Valley, parking is a nightmare but there'll only be one bike stand hidden in a 50 acre space. It somehow has all of the worst features of a busy bazaar with almost none of the good (local products, "authentic"-ness, ability to haggle etc). Just standing in a shopping mall stresses me out.
It's possible that the present state of the art of mall design ticks the boxes for the largest audience possible and I'm the weirdo.
My wider (and a bit tangential/ranty) theory is that the most tacky, tasteless and lacking self-control customers are actually the most profitable, hence businesses generally tend to pander to them. It's just much easier to extract unreasonable amounts of money from someone who's unreasonable (an adult child basically) than from someone sensible and reasonable, so for example us techies are not the target for a lot of companies.
The mall only cares about ROI, and providing a nice space for someone to sit and read a book, play hide and seek, host a club meeting, or stage a free play has little obvious monetary value.
Whatever amenities are provided will be carefully balanced against direct extra spending they bring in, instead of abstract civic improvement.
In dense urban areas, malls tend towards the high end and can be quite nice. The Shops at Copley Place in Boston is fairly high end in terms of shops and the architecture is nice. The Westfield in SF is nice in my recollection.
This has been discussed here before, and seems to be a bit of a blind spot for HN. Imagine you live in a place where there's only one "mall" nearby: that's most of America (geographically speaking).
Montreal and Toronto have huge indoor shopping areas connected by subway, I suppose technically they are malls.
Unfortunately they don't have much in the way of documentation about it. I might have to bug them about it when I go home for the holidays.
There are gyms (generally Konami health clubs), food and shopping, and gardens on the rooftop.
And yeah, the first time I saw a Konami gym my mind boggled. Is this how Snake stays in such good shape? Use promo code Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start and get a 30-day free membership!
I live in Toronto and it's wonderful to have nice streets that you can walk and bike on, even at ±30C.
Also, doesn't Montreal have the Underground City specifically for staying out of the cold in the winter?
I used to be much more resilient but now would prefer a warmer climate, bring on global warming!
Denver gets very little precipitation so rain is something that generally is not an issue though.
Sure, they don't completely isolate humans from weather conditions but these solutions significantly improve the livability and prolonged usability of an urbanization, without burning bathtubs of gasoline to keep running.
Humans are not obliged to colonize every single corner of the planet...
If you think malls are only about consumerism then you've misunderstood a big part of their appeal for a lot of people. Young people and groups of friends don't go to the mall on their own. Malls merge consumerism with social activity - they're for people who enjoy shopping with their friends.
If that's not you then fair enough, but don't disparage malls simply because they don't appeal to you. If they disappear society will be worse for many, many people.
Also, lots of plot points are ruined if people can just text each other, take photos, or record video as needed.
The reason why free range parenting has gone down so much can be seen in the series.
There was a believable scene in which one kid bullied another into taking an almost certainly fatal jump into the quarry, and was only saved by paranormal means.
A world in which more free-range parenting is the norm inherently implies a world in which kids more often pay the consequences of their actions, which can be death or maiming.
We, as a society, do not seem to have a stomach for this, to the point where free-range parenting has been equated with neglect.
I watched it last night so it's fresh in my mind. It was paranormal events that setup this scene and made the bully go to such extremes to begin with.
It was also one of the worst, least believable scenes in the series. The fact that he was so willing to jump, the threats the bully was giving, etc. It was just weak writing in an attempt to create a dramatic reunion. When your 11 years old it takes some time to build up the courage to make a safe jump from something like a bridge, let alone a possible fatal jump.
In the US one of the big problems is a culture of legal liability for every possible thing, and a general culture of fearfulness, excuse-making, and ass-covering instead of allowing moderate informed risks and dealing responsibly with the consequences. If you have too steep a slide, some kid is going to fall off and the parents will sue and bankrupt your town. If you let kids ride the bus by themselves, 1 kid in a million is going to get kidnapped and the parents will sue. Etc.
But there are surely other contributing factors: more families with 2 working parents (and more single parents) and in general less adults “hanging out” with an eye on their neighborhoods, a general degradation of community relationships and civic institutions, smaller family sizes (it’s much easier to chaperone 1 kid than 6), more middle-class angst about maximizing children’s future earning potential, more media attention on rare tragedies, communication improvements leading to less spontaneous social gatherings and more virtual socialization, increasing reliance on car transport and inaccessibility of unsupervised play spaces (especially undeveloped land), etc.
I think this is a big one, and not just rare tragedies but distant ones. 40 years ago you heard about the bad things in your village, now the 24 hour news cycle feeds a constant stream of fear from all over the world.
Yes there is a trend to 'protect' kids from everything. But in my country there is a clear counter-culture advocating agianst what they call 'rubber stone' society where everything is done to avoid possible danger.
There are now ads running on TV saying 'let boys be boys', let them climb trees, go out and explore etc...
I now live in the US and have kids about the same age.
The issue is not homogeneous culture or any other thing people with no brains come up with, but traffic density, at least in my case.
Where I used to live we could roam without having to cross dangerous streets. Where I live now, there's traffic everywhere and cars don't give a shit about people on foot, so my kids do not roam.
When I was a kid, we used to have vast areas to play safely. I just looked on Google Maps and the cross-country ski route we used to regularly take on weekends is 4 miles long. We had to cross ONE street. I used to bike about 10 miles one way, by myself, when I was a little older and keep on bike lanes the entire trip.
We also used to have large play areas in the backyard of every home I ever had. The bigger ones were the size of a typical New York borough block. We didn't have to leave our homes to get to a playground, or a park...we had one right outside of our door.
Obviously this sort of thing is easier to do / plan for when the entire country has less people than the city of New York.
(weird really - can you do that for killing people by any other means?)
My wife and I have semi-seriously considered moving to northern Scandinavia for both this reason and its comparative likelihood of remaining a decent (well, bearable, if only just) place to live in a clathrate-gun scenario.
There was a case not far from where I live where a driver turning right mowed down a 4-year-old child walking with his grandmother on a CROSSWALK. He wasn't running or anything like that, just crossing the street. The child died. They didn't even charge the driver. Fucking ridiculous. It was 100% the driver's fault. New York Times published an article written by the child's mother who questioned the logic of first of all call it an accident and second of all how the driver wasn't charged with anything, not even reckless driving.
The video comes from FEE though, so it's obviously got a political bias behind it that explains it's opposition to safe spaces. People on the more socially conservative end of the spectrum don't seem to understand safe spaces and how they are actually a rejection of authority, rather than an appeal to authority. The notion of authority used is simply more subtle.
Some marginalised groups have made a very valid claim that there is a built-in hierarchy in many social norms that constitute acceptable behaviour in mainstream society. And that they tend to be on the shittier end of the deal in that hierarchy. Therefore, rather than acquiesce to the ordinary way of doing things and just accepting the negative effects of living in a world that doesn't value them as it does others, they have decided to carve out a space where they can assert their own version of what should be culturally acceptable. And they ask that others respect their desire for such a space and not enter it without also changing their behaviour and rejecting the toxic standard practices.
It's quite simple, it's like the cultural equivalent of libertarians trying to carve out a piece of land where they can keep the government out and live in their hyper-capitalist utopias. It's inherently anti-authoritarian. Anyone who goes into a safe space is voluntarily choosing to abide by its standards, no one is forcing them to.
Many malls have banned people under 18 unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. This practice started around 10 years ago.
Just in case anyone doubts me: http://www.parenting.com/news-break/why-your-teen-getting-ba...
>Up to 80 malls across the United States enforce a curfew or escort policy for teenagers
I was still looking young in 2008 despite being well into my 20s and that's when I got IDed at a mall entrance. I was so annoyed/insulted by it I never went back to that mall every again. I can understand getting IDed at a bar, but not at a friggin mall.
If you follow the link, the more accurate quote is [1]
> Close to 80 malls in the U.S. have some type of curfew or escort policy regarding teenagers
Having a policy is different from enforcing it, and a curfew policy is quite different from an escort policy, so who knows what this really means?
Time writes, citing Credit Suisse, that there are about 1100 malls in the US today [2], so this might still be fairly rare.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/teens-are-getting-banned-from-mal... [2] http://time.com/4865957/death-and-life-shopping-mall/
Adults aren't much better, but they're much less energetic unless they've been drinking.
For the last 10+ years many "malls" have been outdoor "areas" with shops, beautified walking paths, communal spaces, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc. Essentially miniature downtowns.
We have both these and the classic style mall here. Only 2 or 3 classic malls any more. However, they are all VERY successful. There were 7-8 and I've watched many die, or be taken over by distribution hubs, data centers (think big non-customer facing building)
We've had about 3-4 outdoor malls developed in the last 10 years. All are going strong, albeit they are new.
I think this is a regional thing; in warmer climates, outdoor shopping centers with community-centric areas have been all the rage for years.
Sounds great, until it snows.
However, the mall isn't a public space and things a healthy society allows for - protest, hand holding, being different looking, aren't necessarily allowed in a mall.
Regardless if a mall is preferable in 100 degree heat or -10 degree cold, those other spaces are important for other reasons.
I don't think this has been true, at least in the US, since the 1990s.
They are hoist on their own petard, because as it turns out, the young families chose the big box stores to save money, and the affluent people are not numerous enough or consumerist enough to support more than one mall in their town. That mall gets the Brookstones and Sephoras and Victoria's Secrets and the Apple Stores. The other malls are full of basically nothing but cell phone vendor kiosks and a food court, and they die.
Malls made an intentional decision to push shopping over social activity, and killed their appeal, because you can shop from anywhere by using your phone, and 99% of what you want comes from a combination of your grocery store, big box store (possibly the same as your grocery store), and online shopping. There is now no reason whatsoever to physically travel to any mall in the US. They have only lame chain restaurants, the Borders/Waldenbooks has been closed for decades, the good music store closed and only the corporate sellout store remains, the Radio Shack is gone, Sears left, JCPenney is kaput, but you have plenty of stores that sell "fashion" to teen girls, including the ubiquitous Express, Justice, Forever 21, and Hot Topic. So the mall is where your mom takes you when the clothes at Wal-Mart, Target, or Kohl's aren't good enough any more.
I think if malls had gone the other direction, perhaps by adding mid-size under-21 live music venues as anchors, they would not be falling apart today.
They also removed much of what would attract teens and that age group. And many of the "older person stores" are ridiculously priced. Amazon, Walmart online, Aliexpress, and others are cheaper.
Malls are full of expensive stuff, not very good stuff, and caters to nobody in particular.
I know for us, it's because "Payless Shoes" that has cheap size 15's is the only reason why. So we beeline in, and out.
You'd have to be older than gen-x to remember malls favorably as a teen. The place to socialize is/was high school sports in (ahem, under) the stands, and darkly lit movie theaters. Since the 80s, which is a long time ago, trying to hang out at the mall will get you kicked out by rentacops or arrested.
Another problem is the dead mall death spiral has no backwards movement, can only ratchet toward death. The closest mall to me went 95% womens clothing stores a long time ago and is now on the march toward having its sixth athletic shoe store. Its a one way path to foreclosure, like a diode action only moving one way. I don't buy womens clothes, so other than taking my wife or daughter there, its already dead to me...
Its interesting that when I was a kid the mall provided the novelty of everything under one roof. Then big box stores happened and there is no appeal to lots of little box stores under one roof when I can just go to Target or Walmart. Walmart today is the early 80s mall of my youth.
But even I have embraced online stores. Every major fashion brand has an online store, and its just much too convenient to order online rather than have to drive to a mall etc.etc. I would rather, read a book or hang out with friends over a beer.
Which brings me to an excellent observation you made: most stores in malls are reorienting to serve more women. I think women love the social aspects of shopping (i.e. trying out new clothes with friends and getting their opinions) as much as the actual shopping itself, which is probably why many women continue to go to malls.
I think Malls are missing out on some great opportunities to be entertainment centers. They get the footfall; instead of orienting towards selling shit, they should be trying to provide some kind of experience.
There's the food court.
Also see the constraint on "mom is stuck with the kids" to this day even in 2017 etc. So a movie theater is a hard sell if mom has the baby in the stroller.
Of course going to the mall implies having money and a car, which means the library is accessible, so having story time at the mall merely replicates a service that's barely getting by somewhere else; better off just driving to the library or whatever rather than imitating it and splitting the participants such that possibly neither can be a success.
I remember Spaceport and Aladin's castle. .25$ arcades, and $1 gave 5 tokens. You could play for hours just on $5. And they allowed kids, competitions, and all sorts of things. I'd go hang out while my parents were shopping, and just chill.
There also used to be, in quite a lot of the malls, a jungle gym or playground area. They'd be full of kids, and you could just chill and hang out, except for free. But there were usually age limits so you didn't hurt little ones. And around this was always a common area. Lots of tables, food places, coffee shop or 2.
Clubs and nonprofits would meet here - it was a huge commons area. I remember fondly playing chess on chess club nights. Played some pretty awesome pros there.
And the companies there.. You had Sears, Estee Lauder, Nordstrom, and all those big name box stores. And then you'd have all sorts of smaller stores scattered, with rarely ever any room left over (1-2 empty plots due to eventual turnover). But there was something for everyone. Maybe it was a candy store, or a toy store, or specialty thing.
That's all changed.
Arcades are gone. Yeah, there's one 35 miles away from me, in the next city over. The jungle gyms and playgrounds were deemed dangerous and unsupervised, so they were decommissioned. You know, for "safety". And those tables? Yeah, those only encourage bums and lazy people to congregate, so they're right out.
And those clubs? Yeah, they need to pay rent if they want to have a group, so they too were summarily kicked out (Well.. it is private property :/ ). And now with less people, those food vendors started closing. That coffee shop had not enough customers and moved/closed. The rest of the food vendors (whom you've never heard of), now started skimping hard and jacking the prices.
And that's not to add in the compounding issues with online stores. A single online store can house millions of products. No real retailer can do that. So, you see the big box stores being squeezed by both the malls running people out, higher prices than online, and better selection than online. So, they end up closing and going bankrupt. It's not any one fault here, but a compound effect that set these things in motion.
For me, its that single shoe place. I make a point to park at the closest place to get in, try on shoes, and get out. There's nothing else here for me. And clothing is really the last bastion of something you really should be in person for - cause sending back stuff sucks.
It'd only be a small amount of electricity used, and a bit of janitors they already have. They could pull in a few non-profit groups doing fun stuff (game club, moms club as you said, techie club, etc.) and drum up foot traffic and business. But given the doom-and-gloom article after article, I'm guessing they're looking for as many ways to cut costs as possible.
I figure our mall has a few years left. There's enough shops like "Lidz", candy stores, some weird smelly pet store, the usual 16-21 girly clothing stores, the goth store (spencers), a Target, and a few others. But the life's certainly being drained out step by step.
They don't go at all. Because most malls nowadays (in my area, anyway) have rules saying they have to be chaperoned by an adult.
You would think! I live in Santa Monica, California, and we have exactly that in our downtown area. The retail shop turnover is insane -- a large amount of shops come and go from the area, despite the massive amount of foot traffic the area sees every weekend (and most weekdays during the summer).
I would also nominate DTLA. Downtown is lit. Parking is wack though.
Consumers are no longer interested in old retail chains. They follow influencers and their original brands, but they're mostly direct to consumer, and everything arrives in two days anyway.
> Parking is wack though.
Literally all of LA is like this. Pro-tip, in SM, park at the library. Cheaper and easier to get in/out.
It seems like every other day a new 40+ story mixed-use tower, with requisite parking structure, is breaking ground around here.
The thing that baffled me about downtown’s parking situation was how so many otherwise undeveloped parking lots managed to stick around given the opportunity cost of land downtown. That was until I realized a production crew can’t set up base camp in a parking garage.
I am always marveled when I go to SM. Huge modern parking structures on every block.
Presumably because LA finally managed to make a section of the city livable and they don't want to hasten its demise. Parking has pretty massive costs for quality of life and the livability of a city.
LA is just in a weird transition point right now, where even a furious pace of transit building isn't going to remake the car-centric infrastructure overnight.
Parking is not DTLA's problem.
DTLA is different. It is still within the driving circuit, and all other LA shopping destinations have decent free or cheap parking.
Paying 11 dollars just to park might be okay for work, but not okay if you're just looking to walk around or shop.
That's why BH and SM and all major malls have free or cheap parking. DTLA can't compete with these destinations in retail, until they fix this.
Joe's parking is not going to cut it.
As noted in another comment, Main St. is a bit better with some ok food, bars and coffee shops, but the retail side doesn't offer much. Most likely out of sheer need for survival due to super expensive lease rates, most retail is oriented towards tourists, with a little bit reserved for ultra wealthy of the area.
The point that people overlook there is that the aesthetics—indoor mall vs outdoor pedestrian-friendly throughway through a central part of a town—don't actually matter nearly as much as thought, since if you went at 10AM on a Thursday you'd think it was just a nice little downtown with a surprisingly high amount of retail in a small town next to LA.
And there are definitely good cafes, parks, and a library, yet all you're seeing here is still just a lot of people complaining about it. So maybe those aren't the critical components the OP seems to think they are.
There's no reason you couldn't turn the space and structure of a stereotypical 80s mall into a different sort of organizing space, without a whole "we need traditional looking downtowns" push.
They have a good restaurant selection, too, with a not-depressing food court and a set of good-to-great restaurants. For families, the mall is still genuinely one-stop shopping for clothes, pet supplies, groceries, bikes, dining out, etc.
I often find myself missing my old, reliable Aeon when I'm abroad. I think malls like Aeon deliver on the promise that malls in America fall short on. Aeon is also the biggest retailer in Asia, IIRC.
A typical mall would have a food court, a large arcade for kids, a daycare (or two), pharmacies, coffee shops, a book store, a furniture store, and so on. Also, unlike from what I've seen here in the US, any decent mall must contain a large supermarket (usually Carrefour). Malls in the UAE are therefore a "one stop shop" that people go to every week to buy groceries and household supplies.
Given how hot it can get over there, it makes absolute sense to have everything in one, air conditioned building.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if Walmart has had almost as much of a negative impact on malls as Amazon and its ilk have.
Imagine putting a Walmart inside of an average US mall. Now crank up the number of stores and activities to 11. That's how major malls in the UAE are like.
It isn't exactly that one is a substitute for the other, but one managed to effectively destroy the highest grossing businesses of the other.
Also, I've been in a mall in the US that effectively had a Walmart as an anchor. It was "interesting" and strangely it probably contributed to that mall's competitiveness in the area.
I think that malls could make a huge comeback with a focus on events that naturally draw people in and an emphasis on the kinds of high-touch products that people generally do prefer to buy in person.
Land prices in the cities where malls are developed have inflated past the carrying capacity of the prevailing disposable income in the same areas.
Is it really though? I miss the arcade machines of old. I wonder if anyone has tried bringing some of that concept back...
I feel like the arcade concept could potentially be brought back, but it would require some creative thinking.
When you're 13 it's like one of the few places that large where you can hang out without parents around.
But yeah that was when I was 13. They haven't really innovated much. It's a great place for kids but no so much for adults. I thought almost everyone had a great childhood mall experiences haha, but I guess not.
What malls do have is space, and that kind of large space owned by a single entity is rare these days within a reasonable travel time away. Redevelopment potential is definitely there.
Also, a professor of mine once wondered why we don't have great public spaces like they do in Europe. Then he realized that we do -- in the form of college campuses.
It's much more like a conventional mall than a downtown: It's effectively walled off from the rest of the neighbordood. You're expected to go there by driving your car, and it's isolated by its massive parking lots so nobody would consider walking in or out a pleasant experience.
What I would really like is for a few blocks of University to become pedestrian-only with lots of outdoor seating for its cafes and restaurants. (The same goes for other downtown areas in the South Bay, like Santa Cruz in Menlo Park.) It's amazing how little outdoor seating we have in the Bay Area despite the amazing weather.
That being said, University Ave becoming increasingly "corporate blasé" in its selection of restaurants (basically great for a business meeting and little else) is sad to see.
The personal vehicle oriented commutes exacerbate this.
There's a difference between needing parking, and surrounding an area with a moat of parked cars.
I think one big problem retail is facing is that, for a long time, efficiency won the day. The chains and their supply chains and economies of scale drove more and more mom and pops out of business, and then only the really efficient chains could survive, and then they had to refinance and take on all this debt that the article mentions, and pretty soon there's absolutely nothing to mourn, and no reason not to buy from Amazon rather than drive to a Best Buy. Some truly unique independent mom and pop or local shops could be worth spending a few bucks more than Amazon to patronize. GenericMall stores give me 0 reason to patronize them over Amazon.
I'm not aware of anyone there--except maybe... jewelers?--that enjoy long-term careers at a mall. It's like an entire parking lot full of McDonalds. They'll find new jobs. Everyone at Circuit City managed to move.
And I'm in no way bashing retail or food worker. I used to tell people I did a "five year tour of duty at Sam's Clubs and I've got the [five year] medal to prove it." My point is that those jobs are both 1) crap working conditions and pay. and 2) easily transferable to comparable jobs at other employers.
Circuit City disappeared and the world moved on. K-Mart is still around but everyone who values their careers has already jumped ship. Block Buster is gone and the world keeps ticking. Mall store employees will continue on.
The real question is why no malls either care to, or are unable to, attract stores that appeal to customers. We are definitely becoming more hermit-like as a society, but there's got to be "something" most non-hermits enjoy. The whole purpose of the Mall is a bunch of stores that add value to each other by being near each other. "I bring Dad for a lawn mower, and the kids hit the arcade." (Man, I miss finding quarters and taking them to the arcades.) So my point here is, single stores still exist, so clearly it's not "stores in general" going out, but more "the stores malls want" people care less about.
No, the 'real reason' has nothing to do with shopping. The article touched on the actual problem. It is way too easy to get into billions of dollars in debt. If you own mall real estate, who do you want at your mall.
Small businesses that attract customers, but have to pay you with money they earn.
Or
Large chains that earn earn billions by playing leveraged debt games, and will pay stupidly high rates for rent, no customers required.
Malls will survive just fine, the moment rents and property prices are back in touch with reality.
Hard for anyone but Amazon to maintain that kind of return throughput.
http://cbs4indy.com/2016/03/21/amazon-bans-customer-for-retu...
Apparently the cut-off lies somewhere around 10%, they ban you for life though.
Online shopping has spoiled me for convenience compared to shopping in person though. What's happened is that I've just ended up not buying as many things because I was trained to expect convenance and then it was taken away
Surely you recognize that your mindset while purchasing that guitar was different than that of a serious musician investing a substantial sum in an instrument they'll play for thousands of hours.
- Wetsuits - Ski gear - Shoes - Bikes
Yes, to me, it is worth the slight price premium to reward that convenience.
The logical consequence would be manufacturer stalls replacing shops in the waiting areas (like a permanent trade fair) and Amazon adding pick-up warehouses to the exits.
This is still the reality in countries where the social fabric hasn't disintegrated.
no reason failing malls cannot be remade into such. It has been done and no reason they cannot be a hub for such.
but as mass transportation and cars whacked mom&pop stores so the internet reduces the needs for boutique type stores and small chain merchandise oriented stores.
I'll agree with and extend your remarks on a tangent that at one point in human history literacy was nice but not required to participate in the economy. Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. You'll pick out your next bicycle by reading technical manuals and holding a ruler up to your leg, or you'll fail miserably at buying a bicycle. Just like its sad that illiterate or innumerate people get screwed in todays economy, people who can't shop like an engineer are going to get screwed in coming decades. What you're looking at is evolution of the economy to increase income inequality as it always does and increase specialization as it always does and require more work out of people as it always does. There's nothing really new about it, its just people who can't shop like an engineer are just not going to be able to shop anymore, at least not successfully, just like someone illiterate has a rough time shopping today.
Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff.
> [...] soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. You'll pick out your next bicycle by reading technical manuals and holding a ruler up to your leg, or you'll fail miserably at buying a bicycle.
I don't know what kind of bicycle shopping you're envisioning, but it sounds pretty damn weird to me. It's kind of hard to buy a bike that just doesn't work at all for most people. Even if your bike is several sizes off, it's just going to be more obnoxious to pedal. I'm in Boston, and I see tons of people commute around on bikes which really don't fit them at all and they do just fine. Even the crappiest bike is leagues better than walking
Also, I don't know how many people currently buy their bikes online who aren't already really into cycling vs people who buy them used or at a brick and mortar store, but I doubt it's high compared to, say, clothes.
[Edit]
> Just like its sad that illiterate or innumerate people get screwed in todays economy, people who can't shop like an engineer are going to get screwed in coming decades.
The type of shopping behavior you're describing is a luxury of the rich, not a necessity for most people. If you were to say, "not-wealthy people will be screwed over in the decades to come" I'd agree and point out that that's already the case.
This is a pretty odd assumption. Why do you assume that doing your research means valuing money _less_? If anything, I would assume the opposite. I grew up lower middle class with a scholarship to a school full of upper class kids, and doing my research usually meant getting the best value for my money : when you have lots of money, it's often easier to just throw a bunch of money at the most commonly purchased product perceived as luxury instead of spending your time doing research on which provides the best value.
Your bike example doesn’t really make much sense, because for the vast majority of people, the cheapest bike will do. Most people don’t bother measuring themselves first, and there’s basically no need to do so at all.
[edit]
To clarify: I don’t think that doing the type of research you described on a thing you’re buying means you value money less, but that it means you probably aren’t shopping for that thing out of necessity.
Which makes sense, as their main purpose is to be places to shop for clothes, electronics, kitchenware, and so on, not any of those other things.
First of all downtown already has a purpose which is to extract middle class home equity, run it thru the retail and restaurant wringer where 95% of businesses fail in the first two years or whatever. Its easy for the city to run downtown; the city doesn't have to worry about parking, for example, because those businesses are designed to fail and new suckers appear as fast as home equity loans can be sold so they don't need parking for businesses that don't have customers LOL. This also becomes self fulfilling, downtown is for dead businesses so why would I go there unless I had to because by definition the businesses downtown suck or they wouldn't be downtown where businesses go to die?
Secondly the downtown has drunks, criminals, crazy people, panhandlers, drug addicts in various state of withdrawl, buskers, homeless, and many/most cities are constrained to the light touch, which is nice for those folks, but also means nobody wants to go there. Crazy people have to go somewhere, and downtown has the church mission and a park by the river and a liquor store for self medication. I'm not even remotely interested in hanging out with those people, so I'll go to the Target at the interstate exit instead, or more than a generation ago I'd have gone to a mall where security is at least not non-existent. Your example of a park bench will have a homeless person sleeping on it, the scenic pond will have a drunk peeing in it, the cafes nobody wants to sit at because of aggressive panhandlers and the smell of excrement from the streets and alleys... You're asking for the whites-only exburbs where the average sales price is above $800K to keep out the riff raff that's 30+ miles out of town, I live by those places and they're cool but unachievable for 90% of the population. I live in the 3rd richest suburb in my metro area and even here our downtown is dying, getting overrun. The economy of the future is clustered around interstate exits not some arbitrary place where a railroad put a depot 150 years ago.
However, I do feel bad for the people that will lose their jobs over it.
Let's make towns have downtowns, with beautiful brick roads, scenic ponds with some ducks, perhaps a waterfall, some nice cafes, a lawn with benches, some parks, some nature, trees, live music, a library and museums. It's okay to have some retails stores sprinkled around here and there, as long as they're original, and not those mass market plastic selling behemoaths we see everywhere.