Cool idea but lack of natural light could be an issue.

Nah. Vaporwave themed laser tag arenas. Let's go.

If my retirement home has Dance Dance Revolution, I may just have to get myself a new hip.

Maybe 10 or so years ago, was a real push to convert old malls into apartments or low income housing. Turns out it's not that easy. Those buildings were built with minimal plumbing, just a few public restrooms and limited water service for the food court. There's just not enough water/sewer to supply more than a small handful of apartments. You'd have to tear up significant portions of the building to run all new plumbing for all the kitchens & bathrooms. And that assumes the underlying city infrastructure that runs to the mall could even support the new water & sewage demands in the first place.

I'll grant you, it is a cool idea. It's just not nearly as simple as it sounds.

If I could buy a large abandoned mall, I would absolutely love to turn it into an affordable community housing complex where shops can be set up alongside the housing units. There's definitely more than enough space in any mall I've ever been to in America where you could easily renovate and turn stores into either single unit housing or maybe 2-3 units (big stores like JCPenney or Sears not included in this count because you could turn those into tens upon tens of units, assuming they're as big as the ones at the mall near where I live).

They've turned one mall in my city into a community college and office space, and the other is going strong and attracting new tenants

They tore down the big, stagnating mall a few minutes from my place years ago. It's still a big, empty lot.

This would have been a much better and surely most cost-effective solution. Instead, we're probably eventually gonna get another soulless office park in spite of dwindling demand.

they've already started turning them into rental units because that's apparently the entire American economy now

As is often mentioned, the plumbing situation makes this somewhat untenable.

But, as the world warms and outdoor recreation becomes impossible, I think they could be repurposed into indoor recreation centers, not that different from a regular mall, just less focused on shopping and more on fun and exercise.

when internet still basically consisted of angelfire and geocities (yes, even before myspace), we used to go to the mall and pester the goth kids smoking cigarettes by the mall entrances who were there because they also had nothing else to do

It'll be just like "Dawn of the Dead"

Imagine how much money you could make by ripping off retired people who cannot leave the mall anymore due to old age.

Not that I would endorse this. Combining retirement homes with retail sounds dangerous for the retired.

In Austin (when I lived there) the main mall finally closed down in the 2Ks. It was obvious that nobody was going to pick it up so the city turned it into an Austin Community College campus.

Can't have residential buildings in an area zoned for commercial use.

No God please no. I hated malls as a child, this would be some sort of fucked up psychological torture.

Malls are actually doing fine.

Apparently they were already shutting down the too-many-malls that there were, but there are still a few hundred and they're doing well.

Specifically, for the reasons you're saying, because they have a food court and arcade stations and basically our community centers, more than just shopping outlets.

It looked like all the malls were dying out because there were simply too many for the American population, but now that number's kind of stabilized and slowly growing again.

But as for the disused ones that were built during the boom 20 years ago? sure.

They'd make good housing.