Unfortunately, most office space is not suitable to be converted into housing. The regulations are different. For example, office spaces don’t legally have to have every room be close to an outside wall to let in natural light, but residential buildings do.
You can learn more about this problem on this great podcast episode: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/office-space/
Become abandoned haunted spaces with nature overtaking.
Turn them into arenas where the public can hunt millionaires for sport.
Ah the inverse running man
Least anarchic lemming
If I sell bows and arrows for hunting millionaires and I made a million dollars in profit… We cool, right?..
The last capitalist we shoot will be the one who sold us the bows and arrows.
Of course it’s not really you making that million dollars, it’d be the workers who make and sell the bows+arrows you’re stealing that profit from.
Cool, unrelated: I’m looking for a market analyst that can determine the safest time to stop selling arrows without needing to worry about “returns”
I got that for ya!
Let X be T = 0:00, and Y = “unsafe”
Just sell before X = Y!
That’ll be one million dollars, please.
You could just raise your employees’ wages if you’re ever at risk of becoming a millionaire.
No, my employees are like my family. I love them too much to risk them being hunted too!
Paintball. So many times in the 90s I’ve fantasized about this while at the mall.
… in go-carts.
Seems like a good place for free public housing.
Yes! I’d suggest some mixed zoning sprinkled on top, so you don’t need a car to access bare minimum amenities.
And architects who have in-depth knowledge and experience on how to design public spaces, experienced lighting engineers, and appropriate funding to make sure it doesn’t follow the same failures that previous projects have encountered
Not if they tear it down and rebuild it appropriately
Most malls are in very inconvenient locations if you don’t have a car, tho. Unless you plan on providing every conceivable service right there and/or add reliable public transport links, it’s probably not the way to go.
You’d basically be building a bunch of apartment blocks near a highway interchange.
Catch 22. You can’t remodel a mall into houses because you need a mall for everyone to go to.
Have you heard of our lord and savior Mixed Zoning?
More like Lord and Saviour scrap all those insane laws and just let things happen until insurance won’t cover it. 15-minute cities are the technocratic response to make a bureaucratic solution that emulates organic city development. It isn’t the first time a technocratic solution promises to solve all our problems, the European integrated neighbourhoods made of brutalist concrete are now mostly dilapidated ghettos and have been shit for a long time.
Yeaaah sure, just let everyone build whereever they want…
just let things happen until insurance won’t cover it.
I’m sure this is in no way lopsided to corporations that can afford to forego coverage for furthering their goal.
Yeah, you could keep some of the mall stuff and have at least a supermarket there, but people would still need stuff that a mall typically won’t offer, and people need to get to their jobs as well, unless they all happen to work at that mall.
Not malls but like 90% of office buildings are sitting empty downtown. Seems like a pretty convenient area to build affordable housing to me, especially considering downtown businesses are also suffering.
Housing/retail neighborhood with doors to the outside and resident community areas inside.
A while back ago, there was an abandoned mall, a company bought it and allowed anybody to rent a small space in the open mall as a small business shop. People would put up curtains as walls and rent was very cheap.
The place was full of small vendors, more classy than a flea market, especially with the AC, but many artists selling all forms, and many odd widgets being sold. There was even a place that did custom glass blowing, etc etc. it was a real pleasure to be in and a community thrived there.
Importantly it was open consistently each day, so you could just randomly pop in and see what’s up.
From what I understand, the place was even making a profit, but apparently not enough. It was eventually sold and now it warehouses antique cars.
I think all those artists and small vendors vanished or moved online.
I miss it.
It was good.
I’d like more of those back, and to experience what community could develop from that.
So they could essentially make the mall business model work by not charging ridiculous rents? Maybe it’s just greed that killed malls to begin with.
I mean, greed is what is killing our society.
But specifically about malls; I was a manager at a big department store inside a mall for a couples years. The year before COVID, the mall switched to a new renting model that was ridiculous. I can’t remember the exact details, but the price per square foot went up substantially for smaller stores. Later that year I remember having to do rounds of the mall to report to corporate how many stores were closing.
Probably got bought by a private equity firm trying to squeeze the last bits of profit out of it before offloading it to some sucker. I’m sure that one year they jacked up rent looked really good on paper until those shops had taken the time to figure out their next move.
Haha, that’s kinda what I was thinking, they turned the mall into a… Mall
Skate parks
Thats what they already are.
Fill it with scorpions. I will not be taking questions.
Good day.
Surface area, or actual volume?
What did they just fucking say
(Jk ofc)
Please, scorpions can only be measured in miles per hour you pleb.
‘Scorpions by the Gallon’ new thrash metal band name
Tear them down and give it back to nature.
That would be nice. Unfortunately that ain’t gonna happen with so many people. Feels like there is twice the number of people there used to be in my area.
High-density housing
The amount of work required to add plumbing, ventilation, and other utilities; as well as the lack of daylight to inward-facing spaces, makes conversion to housing expensive and impractical.
In no particular order:
- VR arcades
- Laser tag
- Art exhibitions
Turn them into sanctuaries.
