11 ms·

Lessons from the golden age of the mall walkers

70 points by flummox 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago
Our mall has 4 busses an hour and it is becoming a non-profit center as stores fade away, the Hospital moved in COVID testing and vaccination and will be moving in more medical officers, other kinds of NGOs such as toy banks are moving in. (E.g. there is no ‘toy store’ to compete with it, no ‘pet shop’ to compete with the SPCA, etc.
- al_borland 4y ago
  From what I've seen malls are consolidating. The good ones continue to do well and get even nicer, while all the others slowly die as people make the trek to the good mall. There is no room in the market for average. It will be interesting to see what happens to them as they die, as they are quite unique pieces of real estate.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Where I live there is a shopping plaza that does quite well overall with a very busy chain home improvement store and supermarket. Some other stores like Starbucks that seem to do very well also. But the central mall anchored by largely defunct department stores is effectively dead. At the same time , as you say, there are vibrant shopping malls within 30-45 minutes.
  - xoxxala 4y ago
    Here in Orange County, CA, they are converting some dead malls to apartment complexes.
    - al_borland 4y ago
      That would be pretty interesting. Are they mixed use spaces? It would be kind of cool to have an apartment with shops you can just walk to, like a little town square. It would be quite ironic to live in an old mall, while then needing to drive to get anything.
    - fibonachos 4y ago
      Seems like an amazing opportunity to build a pedestrian-centric community. Include a grocery store, coffee shop, gym, and some green space, with automobile infrastructure exclusively below ground or on the periphery. The idea being that you don’t need a car for most of your daily needs. Doesn’t sound half-bad to me if I’m a renter (which I was for most of my adult life).
    - tomcam 4y ago
      Haven’t lived there in 30 years. Which ones? Guessing Orange Mall, maybe some in Garden Grove or Santa Ana?
webwielder2 4y ago
The lack of large plazas and walkable streets in the US really bums me out. I wish I was European, there I said it.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  They’re taking applicants.
- refurb 4y ago
  I’ve walked all over US cities. Hell I’ve walked from one side of SF to the other.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Same. But those parts of SF tend to be super unaffordable.
    - presentation 4y ago
      You also have to know them well enough to avoid the shady areas, not look muggable, not be female, not be small, not carry anything that looks remotely valuable, and only walk during daylight hours or else you're taking a significant risk (though all of that didn't save me from random verbal abuse when walking around the city or taking public transit nonetheless). And you have to be cool with places being totally filthy, and regularly cross 6-lane roads on a regular basis (yes, most of SF is like this). Plus you have to have a thick skin to see the abject horrors of homelessness and drug addiction everyday and convince yourself, "yup, this is normal and totally fine". Yeah, that was fine for me when I was a 20 year old, relatively large man who didn't know that the rest of the world has much more hospitable places for pedestrians and human beings generally, but no thanks today. Kinda depressing that at least from a walkability standpoint it's about as good as it gets for the USA.
- ars 4y ago
  Europe is pretty small - just pick a small subset of the US that meets your needs and enjoy it. The US has a huge variety. If a small section is good, you don't need the rest to change.
jkingsman 4y ago
For a bit of a topical giggle, this 1987 woman is... /super/ passionate about her mall walking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMfPDBahbPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMfPDBahbPI
- hubblesticks 4y ago
  I am having a very hard time telling if this is scripted/ad-libbed or a real person. I hope it's a real person because it's wonderful.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    I'm leaning toward scripted. It's a fairly easy set up for a joke. Like this sort of stuff, they're shorter than that segment but sort of the same idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9hRIjys4Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9hRIjys4Qw
    - hubblesticks 4y ago
      It feels that way too. I was just hoping it might have been authentic! Either way it is lovely. Thanks for sharing it!
    - throw0101a 4y ago
      > I'm leaning toward scripted. This is (allegedly?) a segment from the British documentary series Equinox, from the episode "Malltime": * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15434612/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15434612/ * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264241/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264241/ * https://tftsarchive.gla.ac.uk/vod/maindisplay/?mid=7203&nid=3567 https://tftsarchive.gla.ac.uk/vod/maindisplay/?mid=7203&nid=... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox_(TV_programme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox_(TV_programme) So an actual person it seems.
avsteele 4y ago
For my wife its mostly about being able to walk in the air conditioning. Hot outside
- ghaff 4y ago
  There are plenty of locations that actually have reasonable parks and so forth where a lot of people just don't want to walk outside for a decent chunk of the year.
  - colineartheta 4y ago
    Can you expand on this? Are you describing areas outside that people walk in? Or some other area?
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Yes, parks are areas outside. There are other walkable outdoor areas in many places too of course. However, fairly large swaths of the US are very hot or hot/humid in the summer or cold/snowy in the winter. You can still go outside of course but it may not be the best conditions for a pleasant walk.
jmyeet 4y ago
The real lesson of mall walking is that it came about because in many places there's literally nowhere else you can walk. Non-Americans may be vaguely aware that America has a sickness of car dependency but may be unaware of the extent of it. I present to you the 26 lane Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas [1]. Non-Americans may not realize just how large these cities are geographically. I believe one end of the Houston metro area to the other is almost as far as London to Birmingham. Many Americans live in the suburbs. This is complete car dependence. Children in particular often can't go anywhere without being driven. It's actually depressing what a soulless barren dystopia most of the US actually is. [1]: https://charlesandcharles.co.uk/f/take-a-look-at-the-katy-freeway-in-texas https://charlesandcharles.co.uk/f/take-a-look-at-the-katy-fr...
- mgdlbp 4y ago
  > Critics say that the road will simply attract more traffic, but the way in which it is managed means that traffic is dispersed and therefore means there is less congestion than your average motorway. What's the incentive for a UK construction talent agency to defend it? I don't actually grok any road traffic science aside from repeatedly seeing induced demand[0] mentioned; is there any truth in that? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > […] induced demand[0] mentioned; is there any truth in that? RAND Europe 2018 study for the UK Department for Transport, "Induced travel demand: an evidence review": > The objective of this study was therefore to review the empirical evidence on induced demand, with a view to understanding the size of the effect and where and under what conditions it occurs. In practice, measured induced traffic effects will depend on the time period over which they are measured, the geographical area and whether short-run or long run effects, particularly on land use, are included. While the impact of background growth is not included in this review, empirical studies of induced travel need to control for background traffic growth, as well as traffic changing route (reassigned traffic). […] > The evidence reviewed in this study supports the findings of the SACTRA (1994) report that induced traffic does exist, though its size and significance is likely to vary in different circumstances. It was not possible to obtain any qualitative understanding about the composition of induced traffic in terms of new trips, redistributed trips, transfers between modes and trips associated with new developments. There remain wide variations in the quantitative evidence that make it difficult to draw conclusions about the magnitude of the impact of induced demand from road capacity improvements on the Strategic Road Network. However, we draw some tentative conclusions: * https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-demand-an-evidence-review https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-de... * PDF: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/762976/latest-evidence-on-induced-travel-demand-an-evidence-review.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... 2021 follow-up, "Induced travel demand: analytical research": * https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-demand-analytical-research https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-de... From the Netherlands: > The increase in traffic volume that arises after opening of new road infrastructure, is often attributed to ‘induced demand’. The objective of this study is to provide empirically derived insights in this phenomenon, in the amount of induced demand and in the benefits that adding road infrastructure has for users. Based on multivariate analyses of detailed data in The Netherlands from 2000-2012, it is concluded that the amount of induced demand in total is relatively low and that the relatively large increase in traffic volume during peak hours on roads that were congested before adding lanes mainly has been caused by shifts in route and departure time. The benefits of the new infrastructure for users have been calculated in terms of savings of travel time and travel time reliability. Implications for cost-benefit analyses of road investments have been reviewed. * https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2016.05.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2016.05.008 Huge amounts of academic literature on this.
tomcam 4y ago
> Anderson, sitting in for a day, observes the largely male population commenting on ladies’ dress and appearance, reading the paper, and, in one case, getting served coffee by a woman acting as mall “wife.” Wut Couldn’t find references on the Web… what is a mall wife?
- throwawayForMe2 4y ago
  Have you heard of a “work wife”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_spouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_spouse
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Yeah that was my best guess too… so maybe the mall wife was someone they walked with?
tomcam 4y ago
> After police officers removed elderly Korean Americans from a McDonald’s in Flushing, Queens — managers claimed the group overstayed their welcome, buying only coffee and french fries Before you judge McDonald’s… this is a thing in Asia. Talk privately to someone who works in a Shanghai Walmart, IKEA, and so on, and you will learn that massive groups of these freeloading aunties can shut down any business with a free place to sit for hours. They will buy as close to nothing as possible, are rude to employees, and are not averse to clotting up a business for half the day or more. Sounds vaguely comical but it’s severely not fun if you’re an employee or prospective paying customer who just wants to park the kids, grab a bowl of noodles and rest your dogs for a few minutes.
- Markoff 4y ago
  Since when job should be fun? Who cares they are rude? It's not like there is some law you must be nice to employee, especially if they are bothering you. Lived in China for years and yes, IKEA in Beijing is occupied by families enjoying bedrooms and living rooms, sleeping there, hanging there, but I've never seen it as issue and never seen any conflicts, that's just how it works there and I can understand these people considering temperatures in China and some of them not having AC (or saving money). By your logic you could complain about Chinese/Asians not giving tips or bringing their own drinks to restaurants. These both may seem outrageous to American SJW, but I find it as European actually very nice and logical behavior. Why should I be giving any tips to someone getting salary, do you give tips to policeman, clerk in supermarket or McD staff? Doesn't business ear enough money from the food I order that they need to rob me on drinks as well? Well, I might as well eat at home, if they like it more, if they have problem with me bringing my own drink.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    > Since when job should be fun? I love your attitude, seriously. Many, many people would actually be happier in life if they knew their job doesn’t owe them everything. My use of “not fun” was meant to be understatement, a gentle Way of saying that working conditions are highly unpleasant. And while I don’t feel everyone’s jobs have to be fun, I do think it’s my moral obligation not to darken anyone’s days if I can avoid it. > By your logic you could complain about Chinese/Asians not giving tips or bringing their own drinks to restaurants. And don’t worry, I find those practices to be just as unpleasant. My wife and I laugh about it routinely. > Why should I be giving any tips to someone getting salary, do you give tips to policeman, clerk in supermarket or McD staff? You may have chosen the wrong hacker news person for this discussion. It’s illegal to give tips to policeman, but I regularly give tips to both clerks in the supermarket and McDonald’s. > Doesn't business earn enough money from the food I order that they need to rob me on drinks as well? Preach, brother! The whole concept of tips is alien to me because if it’s inconsistency in the application. I am a generous tipper but I am completely baffled as to why I should tip some people versus others. But what I do know is that everyone loves to get tips. And if I can afford it, why not make the day a little bit better? > Well, I might as well eat at home, if they like it more, if they have problem with me bringing my own drink. Judging from the rest of your message I think that’s a great idea
Gravityloss 4y ago
[flagged]
octokatt 4y ago
The lesson I'm taking away from this is if the U.S. wanted to support its increasing senior population and improve the loneliness epidemic [1] _and_ obesity epidemic, buying up malls and retrofitting them into public community spaces would be a huge step in the right direction. [1] https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/loneliness-an-epidemic/ https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/loneliness-an-epidem...
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  or we could build our cities and towns so they are pleasant to walk around in!!!
  - codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
    A fantastic group in this space is strongtowns (.org). The essays on their site have really opened my eyes to the particularities of American infrastructure which make life in those places ... suboptimal. I'm particularly fond of the "stroads" essay https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad, and share the term with people IRL, who also seen tickled by it.
  - starkd 4y ago
    Most of them were pleasant to walk around in at one time!!!
    - iso1631 4y ago
      Certainly not in the days of the horse and cart
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- phil21 4y ago
  Very mixed feelings about this sort of thing. On one hand, it's practical and seems to immediately offer a minor amount of relief for a very small number of people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good and all that. On the other hand, the urban design that caused the social fabric of the country to fall apart will remain, causing the problem to continue unabated. You need to fix this before the people get old to have any meaningful wider impact on the population. Seems like some form of surface-level McCivics vs. actually building up lasting civic institutions that can endure and strengthen the community throughout all life phases.
causality0 4y ago
One aspect of shopping malls I feel is vastly underappreciated is how they fulfilled the needs of those of us on the spectrum or who are otherwise antisocial. Shopping malls let us immerse ourselves in socializing people without having any responsibility to engage directly with individuals. I found it quite blissful to be in a crowded space and feel like a social participant without expending any "social battery" to do so. These days I still visit my local mall around Christmas time for the feeling. I find it sad today's teenagers don't get the same experience.
antiterra 4y ago
I think the anti-mall narrative is generally misplaced. Suburban malls were a mitigation of sprawl but are somehow viewed more as a direct symptom. Strip malls continue to thrive, and the form where there are residences atop the commercial storefronts does little to improve the need to flit from parking lot to parking lot like consumerist pollinators. In Austin, there’s a huge amount of development at the mixed-use outdoor Domain, some calling it a second downtown. Yet, the thing is peppered with crowded roads. And, it does little to escape triple digit temperatures. It isn’t much of an improvement. Enclosed urban shopping areas have been around for a long time, from covered arcades and indoor markets to underground malls in cities. The PATH system in Toronto and RESO in Montreal create decentralized malls that are also ways to navigate a city on foot. Their creation was likely due to harsh winters more than concern about pedestrian traffic mixing with vehicles. They are, admittedly, kind of ugly and sometimes claustrophobic, but they are functional. I know there are underground malls in Manitoba cities for similar reason, but have never been. I love transit oriented developments like the little villages along the MAX light rail in Portland, but I don’t think there’s any where near enough momentum to spark a fully transit based pattern of development like there has been in Japan. (Some possible reasons/differences are covered in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146520307067 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235214652...)
- chrisco255 4y ago
  The Domain seems to be better off than Barton Creek mall. Went there recently and a lot of stores were empty. Even Starbucks moved out.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Malls are generally dependent on anchor stores drawing traffic. And a lot of the historic anchor stores--in many cases department stores--have gone out of business or downsized. One pretty dead mall near me had a Penney's, a Sears, and a Macy's.
  - antiterra 4y ago
    I agree, it is doing much better, it has hotels, large office spaces and housing. What it’s really missing is a larger car free area. The roads aren’t well designed for the volume of traffic they carry: busy crosswalks at four way stops. The drivers are also tense and frustrated and on the edge of road rage when it’s really busy.
presentation 4y ago
I used to live in US suburbs, but now live in Tokyo - a lot of older postwar-constructed neighborhoods especially on Chuo Line from Nakano-Kichijoji have covered shopping arcades (shotengai) that are well connected to transit (as one would expect from Tokyo) and really nice to be in - it's like halfway between the accessible/controlled nature of malls (though without air conditioning), and a normal urban setting. Separately, my suburban hometown in the US seems to be leaning into urbanism, with a (n artificial-feeling) human-scale city development with nice outdoor shopping and mixed use development (apartments, office, and retail space) in the middle of a parking lot and strip mall-dominated wasteland. It feels like that area is boomeing, seems like a trend of these urban islands in the deep suburbs is getting popular (presumably to the detriment of the nearby city itself). Meanwhile the malls are getting either destroyed, repurposed into other stuff like warehouses, or remain open but have the weirdest niche shops which I don't really understand how they survive. I never liked the feeling of being in a mall, it just feels like a weird commercial dystopia to me when I'm in them, but never thought of them from the perspective of inclusivity and accessibility. Guess the biggest flaw is that they tend to be inconvenient to get to, in places that are inaccessible to start with.

70 points by flummox 4y ago

Our mall has 4 busses an hour and it is becoming a non-profit center as stores fade away, the Hospital moved in COVID testing and vaccination and will be moving in more medical officers, other kinds of NGOs such as toy banks are moving in. (E.g. there is no ‘toy store’ to compete with it, no ‘pet shop’ to compete with the SPCA, etc.

al_borland 4y ago
From what I've seen malls are consolidating. The good ones continue to do well and get even nicer, while all the others slowly die as people make the trek to the good mall. There is no room in the market for average. It will be interesting to see what happens to them as they die, as they are quite unique pieces of real estate.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Where I live there is a shopping plaza that does quite well overall with a very busy chain home improvement store and supermarket. Some other stores like Starbucks that seem to do very well also. But the central mall anchored by largely defunct department stores is effectively dead. At the same time , as you say, there are vibrant shopping malls within 30-45 minutes.
- xoxxala 4y ago
  Here in Orange County, CA, they are converting some dead malls to apartment complexes.
  - al_borland 4y ago
    That would be pretty interesting. Are they mixed use spaces? It would be kind of cool to have an apartment with shops you can just walk to, like a little town square. It would be quite ironic to live in an old mall, while then needing to drive to get anything.
  - fibonachos 4y ago
    Seems like an amazing opportunity to build a pedestrian-centric community. Include a grocery store, coffee shop, gym, and some green space, with automobile infrastructure exclusively below ground or on the periphery. The idea being that you don’t need a car for most of your daily needs. Doesn’t sound half-bad to me if I’m a renter (which I was for most of my adult life).
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Haven’t lived there in 30 years. Which ones? Guessing Orange Mall, maybe some in Garden Grove or Santa Ana?

webwielder2 4y ago

The lack of large plazas and walkable streets in the US really bums me out. I wish I was European, there I said it.

Godel_unicode 4y ago
They’re taking applicants.
refurb 4y ago
I’ve walked all over US cities. Hell I’ve walked from one side of SF to the other.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Same. But those parts of SF tend to be super unaffordable.
  - presentation 4y ago
    You also have to know them well enough to avoid the shady areas, not look muggable, not be female, not be small, not carry anything that looks remotely valuable, and only walk during daylight hours or else you're taking a significant risk (though all of that didn't save me from random verbal abuse when walking around the city or taking public transit nonetheless). And you have to be cool with places being totally filthy, and regularly cross 6-lane roads on a regular basis (yes, most of SF is like this). Plus you have to have a thick skin to see the abject horrors of homelessness and drug addiction everyday and convince yourself, "yup, this is normal and totally fine". Yeah, that was fine for me when I was a 20 year old, relatively large man who didn't know that the rest of the world has much more hospitable places for pedestrians and human beings generally, but no thanks today. Kinda depressing that at least from a walkability standpoint it's about as good as it gets for the USA.
ars 4y ago
Europe is pretty small - just pick a small subset of the US that meets your needs and enjoy it. The US has a huge variety. If a small section is good, you don't need the rest to change.

jkingsman 4y ago

For a bit of a topical giggle, this 1987 woman is... /super/ passionate about her mall walking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMfPDBahbPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMfPDBahbPI

hubblesticks 4y ago
I am having a very hard time telling if this is scripted/ad-libbed or a real person. I hope it's a real person because it's wonderful.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I'm leaning toward scripted. It's a fairly easy set up for a joke. Like this sort of stuff, they're shorter than that segment but sort of the same idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9hRIjys4Qw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9hRIjys4Qw
  - hubblesticks 4y ago
    It feels that way too. I was just hoping it might have been authentic! Either way it is lovely. Thanks for sharing it!
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > I'm leaning toward scripted. This is (allegedly?) a segment from the British documentary series Equinox, from the episode "Malltime": * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15434612/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15434612/ * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264241/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264241/ * https://tftsarchive.gla.ac.uk/vod/maindisplay/?mid=7203&nid=3567 https://tftsarchive.gla.ac.uk/vod/maindisplay/?mid=7203&nid=... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox_(TV_programme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox_(TV_programme) So an actual person it seems.

avsteele 4y ago

For my wife its mostly about being able to walk in the air conditioning. Hot outside

ghaff 4y ago
There are plenty of locations that actually have reasonable parks and so forth where a lot of people just don't want to walk outside for a decent chunk of the year.
- colineartheta 4y ago
  Can you expand on this? Are you describing areas outside that people walk in? Or some other area?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yes, parks are areas outside. There are other walkable outdoor areas in many places too of course. However, fairly large swaths of the US are very hot or hot/humid in the summer or cold/snowy in the winter. You can still go outside of course but it may not be the best conditions for a pleasant walk.

jmyeet 4y ago

The real lesson of mall walking is that it came about because in many places there's literally nowhere else you can walk. Non-Americans may be vaguely aware that America has a sickness of car dependency but may be unaware of the extent of it. I present to you the 26 lane Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas [1]. Non-Americans may not realize just how large these cities are geographically. I believe one end of the Houston metro area to the other is almost as far as London to Birmingham. Many Americans live in the suburbs. This is complete car dependence. Children in particular often can't go anywhere without being driven. It's actually depressing what a soulless barren dystopia most of the US actually is. [1]: https://charlesandcharles.co.uk/f/take-a-look-at-the-katy-freeway-in-texas https://charlesandcharles.co.uk/f/take-a-look-at-the-katy-fr...

mgdlbp 4y ago
> Critics say that the road will simply attract more traffic, but the way in which it is managed means that traffic is dispersed and therefore means there is less congestion than your average motorway. What's the incentive for a UK construction talent agency to defend it? I don't actually grok any road traffic science aside from repeatedly seeing induced demand[0] mentioned; is there any truth in that? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > […] induced demand[0] mentioned; is there any truth in that? RAND Europe 2018 study for the UK Department for Transport, "Induced travel demand: an evidence review": > The objective of this study was therefore to review the empirical evidence on induced demand, with a view to understanding the size of the effect and where and under what conditions it occurs. In practice, measured induced traffic effects will depend on the time period over which they are measured, the geographical area and whether short-run or long run effects, particularly on land use, are included. While the impact of background growth is not included in this review, empirical studies of induced travel need to control for background traffic growth, as well as traffic changing route (reassigned traffic). […] > The evidence reviewed in this study supports the findings of the SACTRA (1994) report that induced traffic does exist, though its size and significance is likely to vary in different circumstances. It was not possible to obtain any qualitative understanding about the composition of induced traffic in terms of new trips, redistributed trips, transfers between modes and trips associated with new developments. There remain wide variations in the quantitative evidence that make it difficult to draw conclusions about the magnitude of the impact of induced demand from road capacity improvements on the Strategic Road Network. However, we draw some tentative conclusions: * https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-demand-an-evidence-review https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-de... * PDF: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/762976/latest-evidence-on-induced-travel-demand-an-evidence-review.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... 2021 follow-up, "Induced travel demand: analytical research": * https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-demand-analytical-research https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/induced-travel-de... From the Netherlands: > The increase in traffic volume that arises after opening of new road infrastructure, is often attributed to ‘induced demand’. The objective of this study is to provide empirically derived insights in this phenomenon, in the amount of induced demand and in the benefits that adding road infrastructure has for users. Based on multivariate analyses of detailed data in The Netherlands from 2000-2012, it is concluded that the amount of induced demand in total is relatively low and that the relatively large increase in traffic volume during peak hours on roads that were congested before adding lanes mainly has been caused by shifts in route and departure time. The benefits of the new infrastructure for users have been calculated in terms of savings of travel time and travel time reliability. Implications for cost-benefit analyses of road investments have been reviewed. * https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2016.05.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2016.05.008 Huge amounts of academic literature on this.

tomcam 4y ago

> Anderson, sitting in for a day, observes the largely male population commenting on ladies’ dress and appearance, reading the paper, and, in one case, getting served coffee by a woman acting as mall “wife.” Wut Couldn’t find references on the Web… what is a mall wife?

throwawayForMe2 4y ago
Have you heard of a “work wife”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_spouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_spouse
- tomcam 4y ago
  Yeah that was my best guess too… so maybe the mall wife was someone they walked with?

tomcam 4y ago

> After police officers removed elderly Korean Americans from a McDonald’s in Flushing, Queens — managers claimed the group overstayed their welcome, buying only coffee and french fries Before you judge McDonald’s… this is a thing in Asia. Talk privately to someone who works in a Shanghai Walmart, IKEA, and so on, and you will learn that massive groups of these freeloading aunties can shut down any business with a free place to sit for hours. They will buy as close to nothing as possible, are rude to employees, and are not averse to clotting up a business for half the day or more. Sounds vaguely comical but it’s severely not fun if you’re an employee or prospective paying customer who just wants to park the kids, grab a bowl of noodles and rest your dogs for a few minutes.

Markoff 4y ago
Since when job should be fun? Who cares they are rude? It's not like there is some law you must be nice to employee, especially if they are bothering you. Lived in China for years and yes, IKEA in Beijing is occupied by families enjoying bedrooms and living rooms, sleeping there, hanging there, but I've never seen it as issue and never seen any conflicts, that's just how it works there and I can understand these people considering temperatures in China and some of them not having AC (or saving money). By your logic you could complain about Chinese/Asians not giving tips or bringing their own drinks to restaurants. These both may seem outrageous to American SJW, but I find it as European actually very nice and logical behavior. Why should I be giving any tips to someone getting salary, do you give tips to policeman, clerk in supermarket or McD staff? Doesn't business ear enough money from the food I order that they need to rob me on drinks as well? Well, I might as well eat at home, if they like it more, if they have problem with me bringing my own drink.
- tomcam 4y ago
  > Since when job should be fun? I love your attitude, seriously. Many, many people would actually be happier in life if they knew their job doesn’t owe them everything. My use of “not fun” was meant to be understatement, a gentle Way of saying that working conditions are highly unpleasant. And while I don’t feel everyone’s jobs have to be fun, I do think it’s my moral obligation not to darken anyone’s days if I can avoid it. > By your logic you could complain about Chinese/Asians not giving tips or bringing their own drinks to restaurants. And don’t worry, I find those practices to be just as unpleasant. My wife and I laugh about it routinely. > Why should I be giving any tips to someone getting salary, do you give tips to policeman, clerk in supermarket or McD staff? You may have chosen the wrong hacker news person for this discussion. It’s illegal to give tips to policeman, but I regularly give tips to both clerks in the supermarket and McDonald’s. > Doesn't business earn enough money from the food I order that they need to rob me on drinks as well? Preach, brother! The whole concept of tips is alien to me because if it’s inconsistency in the application. I am a generous tipper but I am completely baffled as to why I should tip some people versus others. But what I do know is that everyone loves to get tips. And if I can afford it, why not make the day a little bit better? > Well, I might as well eat at home, if they like it more, if they have problem with me bringing my own drink. Judging from the rest of your message I think that’s a great idea

Gravityloss 4y ago

[flagged]

octokatt 4y ago

The lesson I'm taking away from this is if the U.S. wanted to support its increasing senior population and improve the loneliness epidemic [1] _and_ obesity epidemic, buying up malls and retrofitting them into public community spaces would be a huge step in the right direction. [1] https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/loneliness-an-epidemic/ https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/loneliness-an-epidem...

micromacrofoot 4y ago
or we could build our cities and towns so they are pleasant to walk around in!!!
- codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
  A fantastic group in this space is strongtowns (.org). The essays on their site have really opened my eyes to the particularities of American infrastructure which make life in those places ... suboptimal. I'm particularly fond of the "stroads" essay https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/10/30/the-stroad, and share the term with people IRL, who also seen tickled by it.
- starkd 4y ago
  Most of them were pleasant to walk around in at one time!!!
  - iso1631 4y ago
    Certainly not in the days of the horse and cart
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
phil21 4y ago
Very mixed feelings about this sort of thing. On one hand, it's practical and seems to immediately offer a minor amount of relief for a very small number of people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good and all that. On the other hand, the urban design that caused the social fabric of the country to fall apart will remain, causing the problem to continue unabated. You need to fix this before the people get old to have any meaningful wider impact on the population. Seems like some form of surface-level McCivics vs. actually building up lasting civic institutions that can endure and strengthen the community throughout all life phases.

causality0 4y ago

One aspect of shopping malls I feel is vastly underappreciated is how they fulfilled the needs of those of us on the spectrum or who are otherwise antisocial. Shopping malls let us immerse ourselves in socializing people without having any responsibility to engage directly with individuals. I found it quite blissful to be in a crowded space and feel like a social participant without expending any "social battery" to do so. These days I still visit my local mall around Christmas time for the feeling. I find it sad today's teenagers don't get the same experience.

antiterra 4y ago

I think the anti-mall narrative is generally misplaced. Suburban malls were a mitigation of sprawl but are somehow viewed more as a direct symptom. Strip malls continue to thrive, and the form where there are residences atop the commercial storefronts does little to improve the need to flit from parking lot to parking lot like consumerist pollinators. In Austin, there’s a huge amount of development at the mixed-use outdoor Domain, some calling it a second downtown. Yet, the thing is peppered with crowded roads. And, it does little to escape triple digit temperatures. It isn’t much of an improvement. Enclosed urban shopping areas have been around for a long time, from covered arcades and indoor markets to underground malls in cities. The PATH system in Toronto and RESO in Montreal create decentralized malls that are also ways to navigate a city on foot. Their creation was likely due to harsh winters more than concern about pedestrian traffic mixing with vehicles. They are, admittedly, kind of ugly and sometimes claustrophobic, but they are functional. I know there are underground malls in Manitoba cities for similar reason, but have never been. I love transit oriented developments like the little villages along the MAX light rail in Portland, but I don’t think there’s any where near enough momentum to spark a fully transit based pattern of development like there has been in Japan. (Some possible reasons/differences are covered in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146520307067 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235214652...)

chrisco255 4y ago
The Domain seems to be better off than Barton Creek mall. Went there recently and a lot of stores were empty. Even Starbucks moved out.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Malls are generally dependent on anchor stores drawing traffic. And a lot of the historic anchor stores--in many cases department stores--have gone out of business or downsized. One pretty dead mall near me had a Penney's, a Sears, and a Macy's.
- antiterra 4y ago
  I agree, it is doing much better, it has hotels, large office spaces and housing. What it’s really missing is a larger car free area. The roads aren’t well designed for the volume of traffic they carry: busy crosswalks at four way stops. The drivers are also tense and frustrated and on the edge of road rage when it’s really busy.

presentation 4y ago

I used to live in US suburbs, but now live in Tokyo - a lot of older postwar-constructed neighborhoods especially on Chuo Line from Nakano-Kichijoji have covered shopping arcades (shotengai) that are well connected to transit (as one would expect from Tokyo) and really nice to be in - it's like halfway between the accessible/controlled nature of malls (though without air conditioning), and a normal urban setting. Separately, my suburban hometown in the US seems to be leaning into urbanism, with a (n artificial-feeling) human-scale city development with nice outdoor shopping and mixed use development (apartments, office, and retail space) in the middle of a parking lot and strip mall-dominated wasteland. It feels like that area is boomeing, seems like a trend of these urban islands in the deep suburbs is getting popular (presumably to the detriment of the nearby city itself). Meanwhile the malls are getting either destroyed, repurposed into other stuff like warehouses, or remain open but have the weirdest niche shops which I don't really understand how they survive. I never liked the feeling of being in a mall, it just feels like a weird commercial dystopia to me when I'm in them, but never thought of them from the perspective of inclusivity and accessibility. Guess the biggest flaw is that they tend to be inconvenient to get to, in places that are inaccessible to start with.