Few places are as nostalgic, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw, yet today amid the aftershocks of financial crises and the rise of online retail the husk of an abandoned shopping center has become a defining image. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?