"What might bloom in the husks of dead or dying malls might not be squalor, (author Alexandra) Lange writes, but opportunity. Rather than tear them down, she argues, let’s reimagine their use of public space. That malls are no longer efficient engines of pure moneymaking is perhaps a good thing. Yes, their empty shells are an invitation for decay, crime, and ruin pornographers, but she makes the case that all the thought that went into their construction should not go to waste. The mall in its heyday may never have realized its promise as a public square, but perhaps it can do so now in its afterlife. In Wayzata, Minn., for example, senior housing, apartments, and a hotel have emerged from the tomb of a shopping center. In Austin, a foreclosed mall has become a community college. Given that so many malls sit atop wetlands and other environmentally sensitive areas, Lange notes, the properties could simply be returned to nature to create a more traditional kind of public space, as in Meriden, Conn., where a park and an amphitheater have replaced a moldering mall.

"Whatever moral or economic or land-use injury the enclosed shopping center inflicted in the past, the buildings are here now, and Gruen’s hope that they would become exemplars of high-minded urban planning—which has remained dashed ever since the permits for Northland’s airport-like loop for buses and taxis got lost in the mail—could still be fulfilled. As Lange observes, 'Any travelers in the world of dead malls must ask themselves whether they are prepared to fight to put people back into the gutted buildings, or if they merely intend to pick over the aesthetic bones.'” - Melvin Backman