Malls aren’t going away, but some types are, mainly the lower-end and un-smart kind. Surprisingly, the bricks aren’t disappearing because of clicks, as online retail has had little to do with the emergence of these latter-day ghost towns. From a passage about the real reason for the ruins from Nelson D. Schwartz of the New York Times:

“One factor many shoppers blame for the decline of malls — online shopping — is having only a small effect, experts say. Less than 10 percent of retail sales take place online, and those sales tend to hit big-box stores harder, rather than the fashion chains and other specialty retailers in enclosed malls.

Instead, the fundamental problem for malls is a glut of stores in many parts of the country, the result of a long boom in building retail space of all kinds.

‘We are extremely over-retailed,’ said Christopher Zahas, a real estate economist and urban planner in Portland, Ore. ‘Filling a million square feet is a tall order.’

Like beached whales, dead malls draw fascination as well as dismay. There is a popular website devoted to the phenomenon — deadmalls.com — and it has also become something of a cultural meme, with one particularly spooky scene in the movie Gone Girl set in a dead mall.

‘Everybody has memories from childhood of going to the mall,’ said Jack Thomas, 26, one of three partners who run the site in their spare time. ‘Nobody ever thinks a mall is going to up and die.'”