What do we lose when our malls disappear?

In today’s Big Story podcast, all across North America, malls are vanishing. Some are simply being demolished, others are turning into condo complexes or Amazon warehouses. The rise of online shopping has made them less necessary for simply acquiring goods, but that was never all that malls were for.

When was the last time you just browsed? Wandered a store with no particular purchase in mind, hoping to find something cool? Or spent some time aimlessly “just looking”? In a hyper-focused digital world, we’re spending less and less time free from a specific task or goal — which is what an afternoon at the mall accomplishes, at least while they’re still around.

Jason Guriel, is the author of On Browsing, and he joined The Big Story to discuss what we’re all missing out on as we culturally stop losing time in malls.

“I think we were missing the experience of sort of being bodies in space, moving through stores, discovering things by accident that we hadn’t set out to look for,” said Guriel.

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You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.