One thing I dislike about this new trend is it supplants true community spaces. There is a downtown in the suburb I live in now but it is a place no one other t

One thing I dislike about this new trend is it supplants true community spaces. There is a downtown in the suburb I live in now but it is a place no one other than junkies and homeless go. A few business cling to life there but I don't know how since there is no foot traffic. Some development company created one of these outdoor malls about 10 minutes outside of the downtown. It has a cinema, a few big box stores (including a Walmart super-center). They even got it right with mostly underground parking giving the outdoor mall a high-level of walkability between stores that have fronts directly on the wide side walks. The security keeps all of the undesirables away and there is a public playground for kids. It's like the commercial equivalent of a gated community. I find it unsettling and I wish we took public money to revitalize the downtown rather than creating these segregated spaces.