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 covere

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.