In much of Europe malls would have to be built on the outskirts of towns because city centers are obviously too densely populated and historically imported to r

In much of Europe malls would have to be built on the outskirts of towns because city centers are obviously too densely populated and historically imported to raze things and build such a huge new structure. People could not get to those outskirts unless the city invested in new transportation connections, and this limited development. Unfortunately, where I am in Eastern Europe, car ownership has risen high enough to make the creation of malls on the outskirts a viable business model. This has had the deleterious effect of now draining business from city centers (where, all these newly bourgeois car owners complain, there is insufficient parking), making once prosperous high streets into ghost towns. Basically we are going through the same historical period that many in Western Europe or North America now recognize as a big mistake.