What would you like to see done with abandoned malls and corporate offices?

Turn them into arenas where the public can hunt millionaires for sport.

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.
Least anarchic lemming
Ah the inverse running man

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.
- Haha, that's kinda what I was thinking, they turned the mall into a.. Mall
- 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.

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)
- In this former office complex we measure scorpions by the gallon like god intended
The first rule of scorpion building is, you do not ask about scorpion building!

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.

Conversion of commercial property for residential use is ruinous and suboptimal.
- Not if they tear it down and rebuild it appropriately
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

Libraries, museums, local mom and pop stores, basically a complete rejection of what these places stood for.

Turn it into housing

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/

Vertical farms managed by the local community.

I think in the current climate, public community/leisure spaces would be good. Nobody has any money, a lot of people don't have heat (or cooling) at home, spaces where people can just exist comfortably need to be made. What if a former office could be converted into tennis courts, chess rooms, libraries, computer rooms, just a room with sofas or tables where you can sit and not buy anything?

I know everyone wants to make a profit but loads of these spaces are just empty, surely something could be done?

Someone has to stock and clean and maintain all that space and pay for the electricity it takes to illuminate and air condition such a huge area. Good luck convincing people to increase their taxes in exchange for indoor tennis courts and lounging areas. I love the idea of having more free community spaces, but the last city I lived in had the downtown library basement essentially become a homeless encampment until they closed off that entire floor of the library and then the city sold the entire library to developers who plan to demolish it and build something else there. With people struggling financially and spending most of their time staring at screens, there isn’t much demand for government spending on new public spaces.
- So, no more library?
- I don't see it as a negative if homeless people are warm.

Become abandoned haunted spaces with nature overtaking.

The dead mall inside the city here became mostly parking for the stadium, with a couple of businesses and a city bus transfer center. The one to the east became an office park.

I would like to see the upper levels of office buildings converted to housing and the ground floor to retail, couple floors between left for offices.

Malls I would like them to become city parks with skate parks (they usually have more up and down than the rest of the city) and buildings with libraries and community space and events rental space.

I don't want any of this as much as I want a healthy mass transit system, safe bike routes, and safe walking routes. But I do want the buildings converted and it is possible, I used to work for a construction company that did nothing but renovation and repurposing of commercial spaces.

I agree, use these abandoned buildings to bring back Third Spaces!

Tear them down and give it back to nature.

In that case, no teardown required. Just let the plant take over.
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.

Corporate offices might make good housing, malls could be useful for community services. Medical centres, libraries, hackerspaces, community courses (volunteer led), open up skylights in some of the old stores and build greenhouses for community gardens, temporary accommodation, kitchens for homeless people (and other services), market stall spaces and short term storefronts for small businesses so people can have a fair go at selling their stuff without being locked into years-long contracts. So many good ideas in this thread!

Housing/retail neighborhood with doors to the outside and resident community areas inside.

Free-roam VR arcades where you have a whole mall or office to run around in would be cool!

airsoft/laser tag

Turn malls into mixed housing/office/commercial space. You could live work and play in the same place, like a mini Mall of America.

In no particular order:

VR arcades
Laser tag
Art exhibitions

hanging gardens of rotting C-suites, hedge fund managers, and politicians.

Turned into individual owned housing with specific bans on corporate ownership and HOAs.

I would like to see much more mixed use buildings. First floor or two shops and then a floor or two of offices and then residential going up further.

My mall turns into a market every weekend. Anyone can sign up and come set up some tables and sell their things. Lots of homemade decor and antiques, usually some cool stuff.

Not the anchor stores, but two of the biggest store fronts which are in the corners in the main square of the mall converted. One is a 24 hour gym, the other is a gymnastics and ninja warrior type training place, and there are always classes of different age groups, and they also sell like open passes so you can go just about any day during open times and work out on the equipment. Talking about cool trampolines, shit hanging from the ceiling to climb around and swing yourself. Between those two places, there is a constant stream of people coming and going from the mall.

They also have a few stores that aren't your typical mall stores. For example, a liquor store, dentist office, bike shop, etc.

One thing that I think has helped the mall a lot is a movie theater, and it's the only one within a twenty minute drive, so even though it's small a lot of people go there.

Between all that, the other stores are doing pretty well.

Some sort of community space, like skate park or exhibition. In the vein of art exhibitions, it could have sections for people to do graffiti

Skate parks

Thats what they already are.

Pickleball court centers and medical malls of doctors offices.

This is what my local dead mall did. They gutted the Sears and put in a sports complex. It's mostly pickleball courts now. It seems nice

For malls, demolish one of two of the anchor stores and use the footprint to build some 5 over 1 or 7 over 2 apartments. Build pedestrian streets out into an out of the way part of the parking lot and full that area with townhomes. Given the size of the anchor's footprint, you may need to install a small elevated park for residents. If there is mass transit nearby, have a free shuttle run to the stop. The hope is to get a development large enough for a grocery store.

Use the mall to anchor a BRT corridor, making a stroad leading up to the mall more transit friendly. Focus on smaller buses at first with small headways to get people to use the busses. Have at least three or four sites where you can level dying strip malls and replace them with dense housing.

5 over 1, 7 over 2? What does that mean?
- Floors of housing over floors of commercial.
  
  So like, the bottom floor is a grocery store. Floors 2 through 5 is housing.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
  
  Five wooden floors over one masonry, concrete, or steel floor. They are the cheapest easy to build apartment houses currently in North America.

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.

I live in NE Ohio. In Cleveland the offices buildings are getting converted to apartments and the malls are getting torn down and replaced by Amazon warehouses