Lifestyle Malls

I realize that I am probably years behind on this subject, but I hate all of these Lifestyle Malls [cnn.com] that they are building now. Regular malls aren't enough of a horror show, so they have to find a way to make the malls even more annoying.

Am I the only person who hates these things? When I think of a mall, I think of a large interior space that you can wander around, and look in a bunch of stores. These new Lifestyle Malls have all of the storefronts facing the outside of the buildings. So, you have to walk around outside to go from store to store. You have no choice, even when it's hot and humid out, or rainy, or snowing, or whatever. And it's not like Ohio has great weather. We're not in Southern California. 80% of the days here are either hot and humid, or cold and raining. The thought of having to walk around in that is not going to put me in the mood to shop.

The article I linked to above has the following paragraph:

"Developers want to take shopping centers closer and closer to where the affluent, professional people live," he said. "Lifestyle centers are a means to that end. Their location is convenient to consumers because you can drive right up to the shops and park the car."

That is a complete crock. The malls are less dense (due to all of the internal streets that have to snake through), and the surface area to volume ratio is all screwed up, meaning that (in my experience) you have to park really far away, and walk a lot further to get to the stores you want.

When I'm walking around a regular mall, the storefronts are totally open, so that I can see what they have as I walk by. Whereas with one of these new horror shows, I have to look through glass to see what they are selling. All of that contributes to me seeing less, and making it less likely that I will wander into a store I wasn't intending to go to. What are the benefits of these things, anyway?