A Room With A View --- Of A Mall

Indian mall developers who had eagerly participated in the frenzied building boom in 2007 and 2008 are now wondering what to do with the properties that have very few buyers.

Here's an idea.

Some urbanists believe that city slickers are ready to buy homes in malls.

Felix has linked to this article about the possibilities of mixed-use malls that offer housing and shopping.

"So a new style of mall has made its way to the market in the last decade or so, known as the “lifestyle center,” a smaller, more upscale grouping of stores hovering around what looks like an actual city street, with sit-down restaurants and theaters, maybe even park benches and streetlights—very much like old-fashioned downtowns, and built near residential areas. Since 2005, only three enclosed shopping malls have been built, and only one, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is on the docket for 2009. Yet thirty open-air lifestyle centers have risen. Many of these are redeveloped properties—old, enclosed malls either torn down or added to, both for financial and environmental reasons. After all, there just aren’t that many 100,000-plus acres of virgin land in good locations to go around anymore."

America has always had clear zoning that seperated residential and commercial areas. Indian cities are anyway a jumble of places to live, work, shop and eat. There are no demarcations imposed by legal versions of barbed wire.

Will we see distressed mall owners try this out in India? Would you like to live in such a development?