The quicker cookie cutter malls die out, the happier I will be. Maybe it will encourage retail streets and condos with retail on more suburban streets. It might even encourage a few decent urban style neighbourhoods and get people out of their cars.
No, the death of malls is doing quite the opposite...
I have to agree with doady on this. It's replacing a mall with a roof with one without a roof. All the parking is still there, except that to dodge the elements you have to be in a store buying things, and if you want to use the bathrooms, I'm sorry but they're for customers only. If you and your friends all want different food, you're out of luck too. There are a lot of malls that do harm to their surroundings, and a lot that are much less harmful or help build a sense of community.
There are many cases where malls do harm. Particularly the ones full of chain stores - the ones you only go to buy things and where employees look down on you for not wearing the right brand or whatever. These are the malls that suck the life out of their communities with giant sprawling parking lots. For example, if all the stores in Square One or STC were on the street with apartments and offices above, MCC and SC would definitely be more urban. In other cases, malls allow smaller business to thrive. Take Hopedale Mall for example. It provides cheaper products and services than you could ever get in Bronte Village (although I admit Bronte Village Mall is just awful for that area's urbanity in that it just takes up space and is pretty much a ghost town).
Here in Peterborough, our downtown mall (Peterborough Square) is pretty harmless to business in the city's core (at least not anymore). In fact, you'll find there many small business that couldn't afford to be on the street. Plus it's the only real place to escape the cold/rain and a good place for seniors to get out of the many retirement homes around it. It does help that it has underground parking and that some stores do open up on to the street.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that malls by nature bad for urbanity, and many malls fit into the urban fabric (the Eaton Centre, PATH, Chinatown Centre, etc.).
We also need to learn that designs and concepts devised in California or Texas or anywhere without our climate will not always work here. Many malls in the GTA were originally built as open-air malls that got roofed over for that reason. Sometimes it just makes more sense to put things inside. Acres of parking aren't required for a mall to work, they're required for the suburbs to work (at least in their current incarnation).
, now i don't see that happening here with this new design