NYTimes had an article a few days ago[1] about Sbarro's bankruptcy that touched on this topic - basically, Sbarro bet big on shopping mall food courts, and that bet has not paid off.
But the more interesting part is at the end - as shopping malls become less desirable, rents will go down. This could lead to a radical reinvention of what a mall looks and feels like. So malls as we know them might be dead, but "the mall" isn't done yet.
If no one is willing to spend the money to seriously build a new mall then the mall is dead. It will still be part of the landscape for a while, just as you can see the remains of failed fast food chains, nuclear weapon launch sites, and pre-bussing decentralized high schools, but that is just reuse.
Lots of places in the world malls are still being built at a rapid pace. London, for example, is seeing an ongoing stream of enlargment, redevelopment and new mall developments. For an example local to me, the Australian developer/mall operator Westfields has formed a joint venture with another developer to combine two local malls and redevelop them into one huge mall, which make Westfields 3rd huge mall in London:
Maybe large parts of the US just has too many/too large ones, given how many of them were developed pre-online shopping. And a problem with malls is of course that population shifts are far harder to accommodate when such a large area is operated as one unit. If the mall owner does not actively manage changes due to changes in the surrounding area, it can easily become obsolete as a whole.
I want to say that maybe Sbarro charging $5-8 for a single slice of pizza might also be partial killer, especially in mall food courts where there are generic other selections for far far less.
And bare in mind that the average mall was only able to be financed by the big tentpole retailers such as JC Penny, Sears, Best Buy, etc. So if Sbarro can't pay their rent... how much longer can the big boys?
Except the larger stores that anchor a mall actually pay less per square foot than the smaller stores. In order to get financing for a large mall, backers want to see big names signed on. So a mall developer goes out and lands a big fish and promises them a sweetheart deal. So right now you have the little guys paying full price not being able to pay. So it's only a matter of time before the discounted big boys can't. One of the big exceptions being sporting good stores such as Dick's.
Source: Worked on a very sad customer loyalty program for Simon Property Group, Inc.
But the more interesting part is at the end - as shopping malls become less desirable, rents will go down. This could lead to a radical reinvention of what a mall looks and feels like. So malls as we know them might be dead, but "the mall" isn't done yet.
[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/this-is-the-rea...