In 2026, if you need new socks, you pull up Amazon and click up a replacement pack. They’ll be at your door in two days or less. If you get a sudden craving for pad kra pao after you’ve put on your pajamas, you pick up your phone and tap out a DoorDash order. It’ll be there in under an hour. This is urban living in twenty-first century America. If you’re under a certain age, you don’t remember a time when we did things differently.

Gen Xers like me remember going to the mall for both of those things. And, yes, most of us did it in pajamas at least once. The mall was fundamental to our adolescence—the food courts, the multiplex movie theaters, the over-priced black lights and band T-shirts mapping our climb toward independence. You don’t need to be a Robin Sparkles fan for those memories to come with a warm nostalgia coating.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur—the days of young people hanging out at the mall are gone. They aren’t coming back, at least not this side of a genuine apocalypse. So what are we going to do with those malls? That’s a lot of acreage that’s starting to look like the set of a George Romero film, and no one seems to be able to figure out how to keep the zombie retail at bay. You can’t head-shot a Claire’s, no matter how much you might want to. Cricket bat? Still no. Either we’re going to have to knock all those things down and re-home the pretzel stand or we’re going to have to come up with a new plan.

I have a suggestion, presented here with the complete lack of decorum for which my generation is known: We need to convert shopping malls into urban villages. In every city and suburb. Everywhere. Now.

I’m sure there are exceptions, but every mall I’ve visited in the past decade or so has at least one empty anchor the size and shape of a Sears—because it used to be a Sears. If you’ve ever done any serious plumbing, you know it’s not a great idea to try retrofitting that system to manage a few dozen two-and-a-half bath apartments. We’re going to have to knock down the Sears. Good riddance. Maybe some of the demolition folks can use a cricket bat.

We replace the Sears with apartments—a big, twenty-first century block of one, two, and three bedroom “sophisticated spaces” or whatever the favored marketing term is that month. Feel free to take down a Belk or a Dillard’s instead. Amazon can deliver middle-class clothes to the mall, too. Don’t limit yourself to one block. Make it two or even three, if you’ve got the parking and the population to fill them. Some of these apartments can be ultra-luxury with solid gold bidets and adequately-appointed staff rooms. Some of them can be as utilitarian as an ensign’s quarters on the Enterprise-D. All points in between. We have several decades’ worth of data to tell us segregating rich from poor tends to end in drive-by shootings. I say cut and shuffle.

When the apartments start to take shape, we’re going to need to revamp the lineup of stores. One of those anchors can become a Walmart Neighborhood Market. I know the urban planners hate Walmart in all its forms, but they can go suck a cricket bat. If we’re doing affordable housing, we need affordable food, and that doesn’t come “Whole,” if you know what I mean. (I mean Whole Foods. I’m not trying to skirt that; I’m just being glib. They, too, can go suck a cricket bat.)

We’re going to need a couple of pharmacies. Yes, two of them. Probably a Walgreens and a CVS. Let’s face it, this place is going to be chock-a-block with aging Gen Xers and divorced thirty-somethings on Ozempic. In fact, let’s see if we can get Pfizer to kick in for some of the construction costs. By the time we’re done, they’ll probably have a vaccine against aging, ennui, and early-onset uncool that every resident will get boosted semi-annually.

Keep the Ulta and the Journeys and, yes, even the Claire’s. Keep all the footwear stores, because there will be mall walking. It’ll be done in faded concert T’s, jeans that earned every rip, and dingy Vans and Chucks, but there will be mall walking—on a scale that will boggle the Millennial mind. Keep the pretzel stand and the ice cream shop and the cookie place; we’ve got two pharmacies, after all. Keep the record store, if it has one, and add one, if it doesn’t. We’ll need all the vinyl—records, couches, and flooring, oh my. Keep the eye doctor and the hearing aid kiosk, and add an urgent care. With all that mall walking, ACL’s are going to be popping like the fourth of July around here.

Keep the multiplex and the food court, but there’ll have to be some changes. Less Marvel, more South by Southwest. We’ll need a Boston Market. Rotisserie chicken may not be that healthy, but after all the cookies and ice cream, we’re going to want something to make us feel better about our life choices. We’ll need a good Thai place. DoorDash can’t have all the fun. Let’s upgrade the pizza joint—something local with both New York and Chicago style, plus a quality calzone. Remember: Two pharmacies=statins out the wazoo. (You thought I was kidding about the pharmacies two paragraphs ago, but you’re starting to get it now.)

Keep the Home Goods, the Crate and Barrel, or the Restoration Hardware, but convert one of them into a decent thrift store. The apartment is just upstairs, and our backs can probably make it to the elevator with the new (or new-to-us) lamp, table, or chair. If not, well, that’s why there’s an urgent care. Keep a couple of jewelry stores—real ones. (No one was talking to you, Claire’s.) When you pack that many fifty-plus types in the village, you’re going to have more than enough anniversaries, graduations, and third marriages to go around. Keep the banks, the container stores, and by all means the Apple Store. Gen Xers love their iPhones, iPads, and i-Whatever-They-Think-Up-Nexts just as much as anyone, and the post-college, pre-family Gen Z singles will literally combust with anxiety if they can’t get the latest app to do whatever the latest app does.

We’ll need to bring back a bookstore or maybe a branch of the local public library. Maybe both. Kindles are great, but a real book is a whole other thing, and as the Xers retire, we’ll have more time to appreciate that fact—a fact we’re passing on to our Alpha grandkids by example, osmosis, and relentless shaming. That’s right: we’re here, we shame, get used to it.

Convert an Abercrombie and the Eddie Bauer next to it into a theatre space. Being the slacker generation never kept us from writing a screenplay, a stage play, a novel, or an album. (I’m looking at you, Ethan Hawke, and thanks for the memories, man.) We’re going to need a place to act, dance, rock out to local cover bands, and generally relive our misspent youths—and to teach the Alphas how to do those things without ending up like our parents’ idols. (Seriously, kids, don’t take life advice from anyone who died of a drug overdose.) Throw in a church, probably where a Penney’s used to be. We all need Jesus, now more than ever. Good old James Cash would back me up on this.

Obviously, I’m assuming the majority of the folks living in these villages will be X empty-nesters and pre-family Zs (plus elder Alphas in a few years). The Millennial and Z families can have the split-level houses on half acre lots for their 1.5 children to refuse to play in. (Seriously, Betas, touch grass.) This plan gets a great swath of us aging hipsters out of the traditional housing market, opening up stock and lowering prices for the people who really need it. (I wasn’t just being flip about affordable housing in the seventh paragraph. The zoning board can still suck a cricket bat—preferably one that was recently used in a three-day match somewhere outside Mumbai.) The mall as urban village keeps us warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and generally out of everyone’s hair. It also lets us do what almost all of us really want—to just be a kid again, hanging out at the mall, and to share that joy with some young people who still have a chance to grow up and be cool enough to appreciate it. (The jury is still out on you, Alphas, but we have high hopes. Really. Don’t get me started on the Millennials, though. I’m mean, seriously… Millennials, man. Millennials.)

We’ll want to move in before Canada Day, so, urban planners, get that cricket bat out of your mouth and get to work.