Unlike in other markets, Southeast Asia’s malls are in a good situation as they embrace experiential retail and adapt to consumer tastes
3-MIN READ3-MIN ListenNicholas SpiroNicholas Spiro is a partner at Lauressa Advisory, a specialist London-based real estate and macroeconomic advisory firm. Published: 4:30pm, 22 Jun 2026A cursory look at the ranking of the world’s largest shopping centres shows the scale of the decline in the US retail property market. The US has only one, the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota, among the top 20. This is not surprising given that virtually no shopping centres were built in the last two decades.A succession of shocks – which included the disruptive impact of e-commerce, the financial woes of department stores that served as anchor tenants for most malls and the damage wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic – resulted in a “retail apocalypse”. While the crisis is often attributed to the rise of e-commerce, “overbuilding was a deeper driver”, Principal Asset Management said.
From a peak of about 2,500 in the 1980s, the number of fully enclosed malls in the US plunged to just 700 last year. The net delivery of new retail space has fallen sharply since 2017 as millions of square feet have been demolished, the bulk of it vacant department stores and malls. Rising construction costs and competition from better-performing real estate sectors have further constrained development.
