There are certainly pros and cons to malls. Anything you buy there seems to be more expensive, because of the cost of the overhead. But what is the cost of a free-standing brick-and-mortar store? A price difference may not be the case any more, maybe it never was. But in a human cultural sense, going to the mall is today what going to a fair or going out on market day might have been when such things existed for purchasing goods, offering services, etc. Not exactly the souk, but certainly entertaining.

In the city where I lived when I was first old enough to go downtown by myself, the variety of small stores, the bookstore with all of it's great stationary items, the import store, the sewing and jewelry stores, drug stores, sporting goods stores, and J.C. Penney with it's wonderful candy counter and the old movie theaters were all part of what made walking through downtown interesting. The mall sucked the life out of downtown. It's trying to come back now, but it is a changed place and doesn't have the same kind of commercial activity.

Walmart sucks the life out of anything nearby because of the way it forces its suppliers to drop every other account to fill Walmart orders, and in the process loses them that other business. Then they're really screwed if Walmart comes back and asks for even lower prices (they can't say no, and just sell more to everyone else--other customers are long gone). And sometimes they sacrifice those companies, forcing them out of business, to decrease competition and allow them to raise prices on other stuff. I don't have a citation on this, but picked it up over the years on programs like Frontline. Ever see the movie The Solid Gold Cadillac?

SRS