Mall together now

My 7-year-old, non-updatable GPS is always trying to send me around my own neighborhood, the reason being that 7 years ago my neighborhood did not exist; it was an Air Force base in the process of closing and there was a security gate very close to where I now live. A lot of agencies did a lot of work transferring the massive property to civilian use (though arguably not quite enough; they forgot about a hospital building, leading to a panicky asbestos-ceiling-tile excavation after we'd all moved in) so that now, looking at my GPS's images of the area makes me feel like the hapless hero of one of the alternative-reality stories I'm fond of reading in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. ("Something was not quite right... hadn't Grandma's beloved rose of sharon always been to the right of the back door?")

Anyway I think bailout money should be used to do something similar with shopping centers. A mall with an empty storefront is a cancer to a community. Just as some cities hit particularly hard by the credit crunch have begun buying and repurposing residential real estate, I think the real estate community (guided by the not-invisible hand of government if need be) should consolidate malls by finding new homes for surviving tenants and demolishing the ghost malls. The properties should be turned into a new breed of park: one where public amenities like playgrounds and skateparks share space with small-scale commercial enterprises like ice cream sellers and sunglass kiosks. Permits to run these enterprises should be issued liberally, not restrictively. Indeed, they should be given away, not treated as a tax as is usually the case.

Under this plan, desperate investors get bailed out but instead of the money disappearing up Wall Street's a-hole, society receives tangible benefits to society: new parks and opportunities for entrepreneurs to start a life in business with very low startup costs. Public-private partnerships have already accomplished much bigger, more complicated deals, like my neighborhood and nearby Stapleton, the former civilian airport. If we think just a tad smaller, we could all benefit in a big way.