A big, climate controlled, pedestrian-only space packed full of different kinds of shops isn't pedestrian-friendly? Give me a break. On the subjective side I think a lot of them look pretty nice.

I think they are talking about the outdoor style malls you with huge parking lots that most people will drive from one store to the other, rather than walking.

Do you mean strip malls?

American malls are islands. Europes malls tend to be hearts of networks

Australia has both, we have the multi level island malls surrounded by mega roads, and then inner CBD retails streets which are surrounded by high density residential and office space which are actually great for pedestrian access as you can easily get from your current location to the area.

There are (or were) malls in central business districts, say in downtown San Francisco or Chicago. These often have flagship stores, and frequently serve business travellers and tourists (in-country and international).

There are definitely more outlying malls away from downtowns.

Both have been suffering badly for years, and more so during the COVID pandemic.

Seattle used to have a decent downtown mall area but I think a combination of high rents, low traffic, general lawlessness and Covid has kind of destroyed that. Where I was really impressed in Europe is when malls or store complexes were on major subway hubs and stations. People could do their shopping on the way home without ever having to drive.

You'll find the shopping / transit mix in San Francisco (Westfield San Francisco Centre and neighbouring shopping via Muni Metro), New York (5th avenue generally via the subway), and Chicago (Miracle Mile via the El). Few other US cities can claim downtowns with high rates of transit service, though a few exist and even those with poor transit tend to have the best options near city-centres, along with shopping.

Have you ever tried to walk to a mall from where you live or work?

Inner-city malls are awesome for this— think the Toronto Eaton Centre which literally has a subway station at each end of it!

But yeah suburban malls which are surrounded by an ocean of parking? Terrible.

And not a lot of downtown malls / department stores have made it through the past three decades. High cost of space and low value add vs online shopping are a tough combination to be up against.

Sure have, from both home and the office. It has several transit lines connecting to it. Easy peasy. Here it is:

https://g.page/FashionDistrictPhiladelphia?share

Right smack dab in the middle of the city.

Sure - I do it probably every other day in London.

fully agree

I guess, this is some of a hen and egg problem, as the argument is mostly about density and the economics thereof. (As the cost of extensive, car-centric infrastructure rises, the income generated per area drops and the reinvestment necessary to maintain this infrastructure approaches the median income of the inhabitants.)

Once, you are going the way of extensive infrastructure, malls may be actually some of a remedy to the problem, since they concentrate the necessary infrastructure, instead of each business occupying and maintaining a vast parking lot of their own, including all the infrastructure for access by car. (On a side note, malls were once inspired by some structural aspects of Vienna, where businesses of a kind tended to aggregate in certain areas – also an argument to density.) On the other hand, as you are aggregating your businesses in a major attractor, you're also depriving your townscape of landmarks and any reasons for the population to go and aggregate there, leading to an inevitable depletion (in terms of semantics, economics, and structural density) of centers and to even more suburban structure. Also, malls are mostly single-use areas, where you put all your business aspects of your town in a dedicated, single basket, by this decoupling and separating major aspects of life in a spacial expression. Worse may be what seems to come after malls: big businesses only, each sitting in a vast space of their own, lined up along stroads, single-use areas hundreds of feet apart, generating even less income per area, while requiring even more infrastructure to connect.

Stroads are everywhere though and make up so much of America's car infrastructure? Even if malls are a blight, their impact is much much smaller than the stroad. They're not a piece of civic infrastructure that fundamentally shapes the layout of, and interaction with, society.