Free-roam VR arcades where you have a whole mall or office to run around in would be cool!
airsoft/laser tag
Libraries, museums, local mom and pop stores, basically a complete rejection of what these places stood for.
Turn them into arenas where the public can hunt millionaires for sport.
If I sell bows and arrows for hunting millionaires and I made a million dollars in profit… We cool, right?..
Turn malls into mixed housing/office/commercial space. You could live work and play in the same place, like a mini Mall of America.
Corporate offices might make good housing, malls could be useful for community services. Medical centres, libraries, hackerspaces, community courses (volunteer led), open up skylights in some of the old stores and build greenhouses for community gardens, temporary accommodation, kitchens for homeless people (and other services), market stall spaces and short term storefronts for small businesses so people can have a fair go at selling their stuff without being locked into years-long contracts. So many good ideas in this thread!
Turn it into housing
I think in the current climate, public community/leisure spaces would be good. Nobody has any money, a lot of people don’t have heat (or cooling) at home, spaces where people can just exist comfortably need to be made. What if a former office could be converted into tennis courts, chess rooms, libraries, computer rooms, just a room with sofas or tables where you can sit and not buy anything?
I know everyone wants to make a profit but loads of these spaces are just empty, surely something could be done?
Someone has to stock and clean and maintain all that space and pay for the electricity it takes to illuminate and air condition such a huge area. Good luck convincing people to increase their taxes in exchange for indoor tennis courts and lounging areas. I love the idea of having more free community spaces, but the last city I lived in had the downtown library basement essentially become a homeless encampment until they closed off that entire floor of the library and then the city sold the entire library to developers who plan to demolish it and build something else there. With people struggling financially and spending most of their time staring at screens, there isn’t much demand for government spending on new public spaces.
I don’t see it as a negative if homeless people are warm.
So, no more library?
Pickleball court centers and medical malls of doctors offices.
This is what my local dead mall did. They gutted the Sears and put in a sports complex. It’s mostly pickleball courts now. It seems nice
Rewild the space and repurpose the materials as much as possible to build sustainable walkable community centers
Other than the awesome suggestions of having them be more focused on smaller shops and other community services…
FPV drone park!
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blow them up that’d be cool
In no particular order:
- VR arcades
- Laser tag
- Art exhibitions
I would like to see much more mixed use buildings. First floor or two shops and then a floor or two of offices and then residential going up further.
Turn them into arenas where the public can hunt millionaires for sport.
