As America's suburban shopping malls are becoming ghost towns, Aaron Betsky argues that their complex architecture character means that they deserves more serious consideration.

Once shopping had style. What you bought, where you bought it, and perhaps even what you wore when you bought it mattered. The stores, the stuff, and you all had to look good.
Before brand experience magnets on Fifth Avenue and discount outlet malls everywhere else, the temple of buying was the suburban shopping mall. Now dead malls, like zombies, inhabit our landscape, sucking the life out of our cities and suburbs with their acres of parking lots and windowless boxes.
They have given birth to websites and blogs that document their ghoulish persistence long after the last Foot Locker has closed. Their heyday is the setting for the current season of one of the most popular and haunting shows on television, Stranger Things. Now dead malls, like zombies, inhabit our landscape
Now their reuse is even a Presidential platform. Some of them are turning into colleges or libraries, while others are becoming spaces for the eager beavers of the gig economy. Surely, they will soon all ? other than the very fanciest temples to high fashion experiences ? disappear. I miss them already.
Just to be clear: I don't mean all malls, but the ones that have become ghosts: the suburban malls catering to the middle class. What I will miss about them, for all their faults, is their style.
They were anchored by one or tw...