Nowadays they build ‘trendy’ malls that look just like downtown blocks and they’re open-air. Who wants to muck about shopping in a selection of stores you’ve got to walk to in crappy weather? Rather ignores the convenient logistics of an enclosed mall. I don’t get that one.
It cuts down on loitering by feral youth who treat the air conditioned mall as their house.
I never wanted to walk around a crowded mall for hours and hours. When I need something, all I want to do is drive to that particular store, park at their front door, go in and purchase said thing and am on my way home in 15 minutes.
I'm must the reverse. I like the new outdoor "malls" that are built to mimic old fashioned main streets. I feel claustrophobic and crowded in enclosed malls. And I dislike wandering endlessly through a maze of an indoor mall to get to the shop I want. I go to a mall on a mission to get something, and get out. I'm not there to be entertained by extended exploration.
I absolutely hate those "outdoor" malls. They are a complete traffic nightmare around holidays, with pedestrians darting to and fro out in front of cars. And there's seemingly no way (at least at the ones I've visited) to enter the far end of the lot and just park where you don't have to fight your way into the lot, and then back out. Access is way too limited.
Give me an old fashioned mall, or a shopping center any day. One without the fancy dividers and pretty tree-lined parking lanes. I want fast in, and fast out.