As indoor malls lose their luster, their properties offer convenient amenities and infrastructure perfectly suited for redevelopment into housing, parks, and retail.

Despite their prominent roles in recent sci-fi thriller series, indoor malls around the country are hemorrhaging customers and tenants, with many becoming vacant husks surrounded by vast seas of parking.
According to a Los Angeles Times story by Hannah Fry, some of Orange County’s now-unoccupied classic malls may soon be revived as housing. “In a region where there is little undeveloped land and neighbors are likely to push back at new housing, some see declining malls as ideal places to build.”
Fry gives a brief overview of the mall’s role as an American cultural institution in the second half of the twentieth century (for more on that, read Alexandra Lange’s Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, one of Planetizen’s Top Urban Planning Books of 2022). But now, malls offer some of the best options for developable land in dense cities facing a housing shortage. The Orange County city of Westminster approved a plan to redevelop the Westminster Mall into a mixed-use property with as many as 3,000 residential units, hundreds of hotel rooms, 600,000 square feet of retail, and 17 acres of green space.
“Experts say that new laws, along with increased pressure from the state to build more homes, have convinced some local officials who might have been resistant to rezoning commercial properties in the past,” Fry explains. L.A.-area developers are counting on “a modern type of suburban dweller — one who would rather walk to restaurants and other amenities than live in a single-family home with a yard.”
FULL STORY: O.C. malls, fading from their hip glory days, may get new lives as apartments

The Slow Death of Ride Sharing
From the beginning, TNCs like Lyft and Uber touted shared rides as their key product. Now, Lyft is ending the practice.

Cool Walkability Planning
Shadeways (covered sidewalks) and pedways (enclosed, climate controlled walkways) can provide comfortable walkability in hot climates. The Cool Walkshed Index can help plan these facilities.

Congestion Pricing Could Be Coming to L.A.
The infamously car-centric city is weighing a proposed congestion pricing pilot program to reduce traffic and encourage public transit use.

Report: Austin’s State Roads Deadlier Than City Roads
Traffic fatalities and serious injuries grew on state-owned roads in the Texas capital, even as city-owned streets saw death rates plateau.

Who Benefits Most from Land Conservation Efforts?
A new study estimates that recent land conservation generated $9.8 billion in wealth nationally through the housing market and that wealthier and White households benefited disproportionately.

Richmond Repeals Parking Minimums, Encourages Off-Street Parking and Transit
The Virginia city is replete with underused off-street parking lots, which city councilors hope to make available for parking at more times while encouraging transit use.
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
City of Orange
City of Charlotte - Charlotte Area Transit
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Montrose County
Wichita-Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department
City of Lomita
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