These "dead malls" have failed to attract new business and often sit unused for many years until restored or demolished. Interesting examples of architecture and urban design, these structures often attract people who explore and photograph them. This phenomenon of dead and dying malls is examined in detail by the website Deadmalls.com, which hosts many such photographs, as well as historical accounts. Until the mid-1990s, the trend was to build enclosed malls and to renovate older outdoor malls into enclosed ones. Such malls had advantages such as temperature control. Since then, the trend has turned and it is once again fashionable to build open-air malls. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, only one new enclosed mall has been built in the United States since 2006.[18]

A dead mall or greyfield[1] is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is dated or deteriorating in some manner. Many malls in the United States are considered "dead," having no surviving anchor store (often a large department store) or successor that could serve as an entry into or attraction to the mall.[2] Without the access, the small stores inside are difficult to reach; without the pedestrian traffic that a department store generates, sales volumes plummet for the stores, and rental revenues from those stores can no longer sustain the costly maintenance of the malls.

Deadmalls.com is an independent not-for-profit website best known for featuring shopping malls that have failed or are in the process of failing. The site features nearly 300 listings of dead or dying shopping malls, many with pictures and historical narratives. Created in 2000 by friends Peter Blackbird and Brian Florence as a hobby,[1] the website has grown, garnering interest from major media outlets due to its unusual content and its comprehensive (sometimes humorous, sometimes wistful) coverage. The creators describe the website as an attempt to retain pieces of history that might otherwise be lost with the destruction of these malls.[2] The site benefits from hundreds of online contributors who supply the website with accounts and photos that might be otherwise difficult to obtain.[3]

A dead mall or greyfield is a shopping mall with a high vacancy rate or a low consumer traffic level, or that is dated or deteriorating in some manner. Many malls in the United States are considered "dead," having no surviving anchor store (often a large department store) or successor that could serve as an entry into or attraction to the mall. These "dead malls" have failed to attract new business and often sit unused for many years until restored or demolished. Interesting examples of architecture and urban design, these structures often attract people who explore and photograph them.

This phenomenon of dead and dying malls is examined in detail by the Deadmalls website, which hosts many such photographs, as well as historical accounts. Until the mid-1990s, the trend was to build enclosed malls and to renovate older outdoor malls into enclosed ones. Such malls had advantages such as temperature control. Since then, the trend has turned and it is once again fashionable to build open-air malls.