This was one of the main reasons for shutting malls down in the first place. Make them all fail and then repurpose the land. You can transition to a modern economy for as cheap as possible and no hassle with dealing with all the individual stores and their leases and rights

It’s the same as any war. Destroy as cheaply as possible and rebuild with modern infrastructure. Before the wars, Germany and Japan had medieval infrastructure that couldn’t support modern traffic demands and upgrading all the plumbing and electricity was impossible. So what do you do? You make up a reason to level it all and then build your super modern societies over the remains. Same thing they’re doing in Syria right now, with a civil war that’s been going on for 15 years against imaginary enemies.

This should absolutely be the case, and I support this as a developer/architect

Malls are not efficient use of real estate, and high-density housing can still support ground level retail and F&B without wasting the majority of land on brick and mortar for big businesses that are already transitioning mainly to direct-to-consumer and ecommerce

Outdoor malls are a different case, such as the Irvine Spectrum, Grove, Promenade, etcetera-- mainly because that is a completely different class of real estate compared to the malls that are failing.

We don't need millions of square feet of indoor shopping that is only activated until 8-10pm when it can be developed into apartment/condominiums with retail and restaurants on the bottom level. When you do that, you accommodate a better use of the land by increasing the inventory of housing in California (which is largely short of what is needed) but you also create a safer area due to the foot/vehicle traffic occurring at all hours. Additionally, housing supports brick and mortar, grocers and small businesses a lot more than destination travelers/shoppers.