Gen Z and the Post-Mall Mall
Once the glittering agora of suburban America, the mall stood as a climate-controlled monument to consumerism, teenage rites of passage and Orange Julius-fueled afternoons. Now, many sit hollow—ghosts of their former selves. But the story isn’t over. A new revivalist movement is underway, led not by nostalgic boomers but by Gen Z consumers who are reshaping how we use and think about the physical space of American malls: more than retail, a cultural artifact, embedded in the suburban psyche. For decades, malls have served as communal hubs where shopping, dining and entertainment converge under one roof. They’ve been the backdrop to adolescence, offering a space apart from school and home; public, yet personal. A social stage as much as a shopping center.
Southdale Center, the first enclosed shopping mall in America, was built in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota. It was designed by Victor Gruen, an Austrian-American architect who imagined Southdale Center as a communal hub, not just a place to buy socks. Gruen’s original vision was utopian: pedestrian-friendly, climate-controlled and rich with public space. Over time, his model was Americanized—less civic forum, more capitalist cathedral. Malls were tokens of postwar optimism. In the 1950s and ’60s, as suburban sprawl and car culture transformed the American landscape, developers carved expansive complexes anchored by department stores and flanked by asphalt seas. They were convenient, curated, air-conditioned environments that offered an escape from urban grit and domestic tedium.
Malls have indeed struggled in the face of digitization. For decades, blame was placed on big-box chains and e-commerce convenience. More recently, some blamed the pandemic’s curb on in-person gatherings. Malls came to symbolize a crumbling pinnacle of access—unable to compete with the precision and scale of online retail. Others chronicled the decline visually, turning empty malls into documentary film exhibits of consumer culture in decay. Websites like DeadMalls.com sprang up to archive the erosion, with user-generated content reporting from abandoned escalators and overgrown food courts. But the so-called “death of the American mall” has long been disproven. Even the digital mourning has quieted—DeadMalls’ last update came in 2022, just as signs of a physical revival began to emerge.
As the world returned to post-pandemic routines, American youth reentered and reanimated the very spaces once left for dead. A 2023 International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) survey found Gen Z shoppers now prefer in-person shopping as much—or more—than online. In 2022 alone, mall sales jumped 11 percent, and for the first time since 2016, more stores opened than closed. Gen Z’s mall revival isn’t about shopping but tactility and spontaneity. After formative years flattened by algorithms and lockdowns, this generation craves uncurated space: the randomness of bumping into an old friend, the serendipity of discovering a store you didn’t Google first. In-person interaction is rebranded as premium.
Some developers are responding with ambition. American Dream, the $5 billion megamall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was pitched as an economic engine, complete with an indoor ski slope,
Other retail developers have found success in thinking beyond stores entirely. In 2024, Simon Properties broke ground for 234 new homes in the developer’s ongoing mixed-use redevelopment of Northgate Station in Seattle. The former Northgate Mall is being reimagined as a mixed-use community hub with hotels, residential buildings, 54,000 square feet of public green space, retail and a new, $80 million sports complex and NHL training facility. In Austin, music venues and pop-up art installations have become mall anchors: A 65,000-square-foot AEG Presents music venue is planned for River Park, anchoring a significant mixed-use development in the city’s southeast section. What is the difference between the American Dream and Northgate Station? One still relies heavily on retail and the sort of retail-adjacent experiences that a person might only want to do once a year—giving shoppers little reason to return. The other represents the next evolution of the American mall—which may not be a mall at all, but a hybrid of public square, entertainment district and third workplace.
To stay relevant, malls are reembracing their origins as social experiences. Malls are leaning into their original appeal—part shopping center, part social stage. This strategic reinvention isn’t about layout or tenants—it’s about meaning. Sixty percent of Gen Z respondents in a recent ICSC poll said they’d rather spend money on experiences than goods. Malls are listening.
In the new model, the mall becomes a mixed-use ecosystem. Picture a barber shop beside an ice cream parlor, nestled within a multi-level department store. These spaces are no longer about transactions alone—they’re cultural arenas where commerce, leisure and identity intersect.
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s “Third Place” theory—spaces beyond home and work where people gather informally—feels newly relevant. Malls, coworking spaces and even social dining apps are filling that communal void. By some estimates, coworking usage is up 25 percent year-over-year. Meetup culture is back. Apps like Timeleft, which match strangers for group dinners based on shared interests, suggest Gen Z’s appetite for in-person connection.
What’s emerging is a new kind of place attachment—rooted not in nostalgia, but in defiance of digital fatigue. Rather than dissolving, brick-and-mortar retail is evolving. Technology hasn’t replaced physical space; it’s reinforcing it. The online and offline are becoming symbiotic. As digital life accelerates, Gen Z quietly leads a return to place, where connection, commerce and identity intersect. The physical ties of community are too essential to forgo—and Gen Z, once dismissed as digitally detached, is now breathing new life into the spaces some feared were fading.