Can "Deliberate Scarcity" Halt Excessive Consumption AND Foster Community?

Abstract

Shopping malls once functioned as consumer-driven utopias within suburban landscapes. They were controlled environments where commerce, novelty, and social life were deliberately intertwined. This paper proposes that the decline of these physical spaces is inextricably linked to the contemporary loneliness epidemic.

While malls were designed as sites of consumption, the “productive friction” inherent in physical retail unintentionally fostered shared public experiences and stable social archetypes. The transition to frictionless, algorithmic digital consumption has replaced these communal environments with individualized “simulacra,” leading to a mass collapse of stable identity in favour of disposable online micro-trends.

This essay argues that “The Mall” functioned as a consumption-mediated “third place” that late-stage capitalism has since hollowed out through hyper-efficiency. By practicing “Deliberate Scarcity,” which involves intentionally reintroducing friction into our shopping and social rituals, we may begin to rebuild the sense of community and individualism that has been dulled over time.

Keywords

capitalism, commodification, consumerism, culture, late-stage capitalism, loneliness, shopping malls

Introduction

Shopping malls, hereby known as “The Mall,” were an attempt to build a consumer-driven utopia amidst otherwise bland suburbs. They offered community and novelty without risk or weather. At their core, malls were designed to connect shoppers with global trends and cultures. They were a way for us to feel as though we were participating in something larger, even if we were simply shopping or wasting time.

This piece proposes that the decline of shopping malls and our loneliness epidemic are connected—ironically—through excessive consumption. I am not only referring to ultra-fast fashion retailers like Shein, making it cheaper to shop online than in-person. The ease of access to nearly all material goods and entertainment has transformed most aspects of our lives in a relatively short amount of time. Two important dates are the release of the first iPhone in 2007 and April 2020, which was the first time that online retail sales surpassed brick-and-mortar sales in Canada (Statistics Canada).

While official statistical research directly linking the loneliness epidemic to the decline of brick-and-mortar shopping is largely the domain of humanities scholars, significant data exists regarding the correlation between rising isolation, increased internet usage, and the erosion of “third places.” These studies include the public health advisories of the U.S. Surgeon General, as well as academic reviews of consumer behavior and the psychological drivers of online compulsive buying (Dymecka et al.; Liu et al.; United States, Dept. of Health and Human Services).

As an example, prior to the proliferation of online shopping and streaming, if you wanted to hear a new song you had to wait for the radio to play it, wait for MTV or Much Music to air it, or head to your local mall to buy the album or preview it in a listening booth. The Mall was also the primary place to spot new movie posters or see what was in style. You needed to go somewhere physical to accomplish these things, which ended up forcing a sense of community amongst shoppers and mall employees alike. Today, however, everything has become so abundant that the ease of access provided by the internet has not only destroyed shopping malls but also contributed to an ever-snowballing loneliness epidemic that few people seem to know how to stop.

This information would imply that it is teenagers and young adults who have been the most impacted by the decline of The Mall. However, seniors and those who are physically disabled also rely on The Mall for socialization opportunities and often exercise. The decline of The Mall has impacted practically everyone, regardless of class or physicality (Silva et al.).

In late-stage capitalism, almost everything becomes commodified, sharing the bond of existing within the system. I genuinely believe that the solution to both saving The Mall and addressing our loneliness epidemic is the same: practicing Deliberate Scarcity. Not “deliberate scarcity” in the same way that marketers practice to create buzz for products, but by deliberately buying less and also shopping in person in order to embrace the friction of life. I am not referring to “minimalism,” although there are similarities between the two. While Deliberate Scarcity is about focusing on intentional consumer choices to reintroduce friction into our lives, minimalism as a movement and aesthetic emphasizes decluttering and personal space. In short, Deliberate Scarcity aims to renew declining social rituals and habits, while minimalism is typically connected to decluttering and the efficiency of one’s environment.

Think of Deliberate Scarcity as a spin-off to the “Slow Consumption Movement,” which is an offshoot of the “Slow Food Movement.” Both slow movements are about encouraging more balanced and sustainable lifestyles by doing things in a slower and move deliberate way. The “Deliberate Scarcity” that this essay discusses is has similar methods to the “Slow Consumption Movement,” but is unique in that Deliberate Scarcity argues that friction is essential for community building and for a healthy sense of self.

Scholars have long argued that informal gathering spaces – so-called “third places” – play an important role in fostering community (Oldenburg). More recent research suggests that the disappearance of these spaces may contribute to rising loneliness (Finlay et al.). However, relatively little attention has been paid to the role consumer culture itself plays in both creating and eroding these environments.

This essay argues that shopping malls functioned as consumption-mediated third places, and that the expansion of unlimited digital consumption has undermined the social structures they once supported. Because late-stage capitalism absorbs and commodifies nearly everything it touches, when shared experiences like shopping become too easily accessible, identities formed around those experiences risk collapsing into commodity-driven performances. In this sense, the same forces that once helped create communal retail environments have also contributed to their erosion. By acting contrary to the logic of frictionless consumption – returning to physical locations like The Mall and practicing a form of Deliberate Scarcity through personal style rather than chasing online micro-trends – it may be possible to begin reestablishing the shared experiences and social structures that once formed around these spaces.

Communities: Real and Imagined

There’s nothing like walking around a mall to tell you that the old world is dead.
— Tim Dillon (The Tim Dillon Show, ep. 492)

The designer of The Mall as we know it, Austrian-American architect Victor Gruen, had a very strong vision for what he wanted to create. He initially envisioned The Mall as a “socialist-utopian experiment to build a space both for consumption and community” (Brown 105). Gruen wanted to create a center that wasn’t just for shopping, but that could act as a community gathering place complete with food halls and accessible social services. As a staunch socialist, he prioritized urban revitalization projects that encouraged pedestrians over cars and fostered healthy communities. But when his template for The Mall became so successful that it became the template for every mall (as well as contributing to the decline in small-town Main Streets), he eventually disavowed his creation and moved back to Austria.

Despite Gruen believing that he essentially created his own Frankenstein’s Monster in the form of The Mall, shopping malls themselves ended up shaping not just global shopping habits for many decades, but also the socialization habits and communities of entire generations (specifically, Gen X and Millennials).

“Shopping centres (SCs) serve as important social arenas where individuals frequently experience positive emotions unrelated to shopping activities. In Norway, recent research indicates sociodemographic differences in how people appreciate SCs as spaces for social interaction. Elderly individuals, immigrants and those with lower educational levels find the physical and social features of SCs particularly attractive.” (Pettersen et al. 1)

While this essay is arguing that the rise of online shopping at the detriment of brick-and-mortar malls is connected to an increase in social isolation, there are studies that show how the internet can help some seniors and disabled people to feel more connected to the world. However, this is often at the expense of or in lieu of real-world experiences that they are unable to experience anyway due to their physical limitations (Silva et al.). In a study about the COVID-19 pandemic and its connection to shopping habits, researcher Jiawei Wang found that “consumers with more frequent bouts of loneliness prefer offline consumption, whereas consumers with higher self-efficacy prefer online shopping. Perceptions of vulnerability and severity caused by loneliness increase consumers’ negative attitudes towards online shopping” (Wang 4).

But this essay is not arguing that online shopping doesn’t serve a purpose; it is arguing that in order to halt the increase of loneliness on a large scale, we need to conscientiously choose to shop online less so that we can “embrace friction” and have more human-to-human interactions. I understand that that is not possible in the same sense for everyone (for example, the physically disabled), but do believe that every one could benefit from more time amidst friends and loved ones and a stronger sense of community.

As the internet became increasingly accessible and the prevalence of online shopping continued to grow, consumers were initially excited; online shopping was too convenient not to participate in. But, just as The Mall wiped out many small-town businesses, online shopping eventually decimated The Mall. What many of us didn’t realize at the time, though, was how much shopping malls impacted our lives in ways that weren’t directly related to just shopping. During its Golden Age (mid-1980s to 2005), The Mall was an essential socialization spot for working-class families, teenagers, and the elderly alike (Hartmans). It was the ultimate “third place.”

A “third place” is a term first used in 1989 by sociologist Ray Oldenburg. His definition of a third place is a location outside of home and work that offers entertainment, leisure, and community. By his definition, the main purpose of these locations is to foster socialization through conversations both with friends and strangers alike.

“Taken together, the concepts of social interaction, social infrastructure and third places provide a cohesive framework for understanding how commercial spaces like shopping centres (SCs) may support everyday social life. Social infrastructure offers the broader context in which physical and organisational settings enable repeated contact and the formation of relationships. As elements of the social infrastructure, third places are informal and accessible venues that encourage low-threshold interaction beyond the domains of home and work. SCs function as third places to the extent that they foster routine encounters, co-presence and a sense of ease and familiarity.” (Pettersen et al. 2)

Not only are third places a source of fun and entertainment, but their roles in communities shape patterns of both morbidity and mortality (Finlay et al.). Bluntly put, a healthy third place (i.e., a successful shopping mall) is the sign of a healthy community; a decline in third places represents a decline in the overall wellness of a community.

The internet initially offered communities in the form of social media, but as with most things touched by the ever-accelerating forces of late-stage capitalism, those too were gradually hollowed out by the profit motives of tech companies. While websites like Tumblr or Reddit fostered conversations and a sense of belonging in their early days, those positive interactions have been largely replaced by – at best – frustrating interactions with combative strangers, or at worst – frustrating interactions with bots. Endless scrolling transformed social media from genuine online communities (though, as we now know, they were also secretly data-mining operations) into soulless applications designed primarily to shovel advertisements and algorithmically curated content into users’ feeds.

The “communities” that exist online today are largely simulacra. Simulacra is a term coined by philosopher Jean Baudrillard which refers to the idea of things that have been copied or duplicated so many times that the original has been completely replaced and/or forgotten. For example, the “Fantasyland Hotel” in the West Edmonton Mall, which offers various themed rooms such as “tropical” or “Egyptian,” could be deemed simulacra as the themes are so far removed from what would really represent the tropics or Egypt that they have become their own thing. Essentially, simulacra is a copy of a copy.

In that way, many of the remaining “successful” malls are a form of simulacra. Stores may be open and people may appear to be shopping, but many retailers operate at a loss and function primarily as physical reminders of their online counterparts. Meanwhile, many shoppers are simply passing time rather than participating in the kinds of spontaneous, pro-social interactions that malls once fostered.

In a capitalist society, it is nearly impossible to not participate in it (Author’s note: This would be true in most hypothetical dominant economic systems). So yes, even in their heyday, malls existed entirely to promote consumption. It was incidental and serendipitous that they ended up becoming a beloved third place that fostered communities. I would argue that this only happened because of the slight barrier to access that malls had, versus today’s complete and unending access to online shopping and streaming. By gathering people in close proximity and exposing them to others from similar economic or cultural backgrounds, The Mall also once functioned, in a sense, as the “great labeler” of social life (Were you a “Bootlegger” teen, or a “Hot Topic” teen?).

“The Mall wasn’t just a place to consume; it was a place to be shared with others. Stores, food courts, booths that showed off the newest trendy gadget or skin-burning acne treatments, and occasionally a mismanaged zoo or water park made The Mall a place where you could easily waste hours without ever spending a dime. It was like walking through a living catalog or tabloid magazine. Safe from the weather, free from car traffic, and often home to a collection of “international” cuisines like bad Italian food, bad Chinese food, bad Mexican food, and more recently bad Korean, Japanese, and Indian food, The Mall was as close as many suburban teens would ever get to wandering around an international city.” (Good, “What We Lost”)

Eventually, though, The Mall began to die because consumer culture finally found a way to sell us everything without requiring us to leave our homes (and often at a cheaper price), not because we stopped wanting community. The ease of online shopping, coupled with attractively lower prices, was especially alluring to shoppers who were struggling because of the 2008 economic crash. (As a side note to younger readers: early on, online-only stores were less expensive to shop from as they did not have nearly as much overhead. Eventually, however, as we can now see, prices would balance out regardless of corporate profit margins.)

Lest anyone think that this essay is only looking at The Mall through a thick lens of nostalgia, it is important to point out that there were negatives. Just as online shopping has all but decimated The Mall’s sales numbers, The Mall at its peak was blamed for the decline of countless independent small retailers. It was criticized during that time as being a forebearer of late-stage capitalism. In his accidentally prophetic 1986 book, The Malling of America, author William Severini Kowinski agreed with many of Victor Gruen’s previously mentioned critiques about how these shopping centers had become large, bland corporate monstrosities and were a symptom of a much larger problem with capitalism.

Ironically, one of the other criticisms in the mainstream zeitgeist was that The Mall was a simulacrum of public squares. Time has a way of changing our perspectives, though. Perhaps because they had destroyed the public spaces that existed before them – thus giving society a collective gap in our memories about what existed before The Mall – or perhaps because The Mall really was superior; it is subjective. For better or worse, The Mall, even in its death, has a strong grip on many people’s psyches:

“It is more than just a building to those in the dead mall scene. It is living and breathing, growing and changing. The Mall “lives and dies” with its enthusiasts. Critics of malls see them as depoliticizing, exploitative, and even zombifying … However, these critical views do not negate the affection enthusiasts have for The Mall. Enthusiasts attempt to reconcile these seemingly contradictory perspectives. They reckon with a ruin that is both a marker of the wastefulness of mass consumer capitalism and a place once central to their communities, childhoods, and lives.” (Brown 105)

Consumerism is deeply interwoven into Western culture. While the prevalence of excessive and performative consumption is relatively new, American President Calvin Coolidge openly argued in the 1920s that advertising was meant to “create desire” and shape how citizens lived their everyday lives. According to him, consumer culture was not an accidental byproduct of capitalism but an explicit national project. To Coolidge, advertising created “new thoughts, new desires, new actions… Desire is the crucial element separating the civilized from the uncivilized.”

In the 100 years following Coolidge’s presidency, that idea has metastasized from encouraging economic growth to becoming an inescapable belief that has started to rot away at everything that once made capitalism enjoyable.

While loneliness and the decline of shopping malls are connected, loneliness itself actually encourages capitalism. To put it bluntly, the more isolated we become, the more we are inclined to shop. Online shopping thrives because of loneliness, not in spite of it. This is why to meaningfully address our loneliness epidemic, we do not want more consumption, but less of it. So, in order to save The Mall – the very thing once criticized as the pinnacle of 1980s consumeristic excess – we need to spend less money (and/or spend it in deliberate ways). I imagine that Victor Gruen would be very pleased with this.

Are We What We Buy?

I was ashamed of myself until I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.
— Franz Kafka

In late-stage capitalist society, are we actually what we buy? First, we must distinguish between the material and the spiritual. The definition of the material world is straightforward – it refers to the physical world around us. “Spiritual” can mean many things to many people, but for the sake of this paper, the spiritual refers to our internal sense of self, our agency over our own lives, and our personal sense of meaning. So now we can ask: what separates the spiritual from the material if identity itself is largely performed through consumption? Online, you are “targeted” and siloed through algorithms that predict your desires before you even feel them. In The Mall, and physical life, we are able to make our own decisions based on external stimuli and a true internal sense of self and spiritual will.

Yes, fashion and internet subcultures allow for self-expression. But what is the point when these performances are only for external validation? To me, online external validation is empty because it is quantified. Online, your “style” is reduced to a metric of likes and shares, stripping away the “vibe” that can only exist in a room. In a digital sea of billions, you are just one more account. However, in The Mall, you are a full human. In The Mall, you can be whichever archetype you fit into (and we all fit into one). You could be the skater, the goth, the preppy, or the exhausted mom, existing in a balanced ecosystem of other archetypes. The Mall is a shared space, creating a social friction that digital platforms, try as they might, cannot fully replicate.

Although malls were commercial, they were socially structuring. They helped teenagers form identities through constrained environments, rather than being told everyone should dress the same a la modern social media trends and shopping habits (Kim et al. 140). An identity based entirely on consumption runs the same risk of collapsing just as shopping malls have. This is especially prevalent on the online platform TikTok, which has become known for its rapidly produced and then disposed of online micro-trends and aesthetics like “mob wife” style or “Cottagecore.” From roughly 2023 to 2025 alone, TikTok pushed over twenty-five viral nail polish trends. All of these were initially touted as users’ “new identities” and “favourite aesthetics” but were quickly forgotten by the time the next trend arose. Although it is almost satirical to say at this point, TikTok has become known for its rapid creation of these trends that it quickly disposes of. Some are more egregious than others, as some trends even involve pretending to be entirely different ethnicities.

YouTuber, Ashley Aviola, described this trend aptly in her video “The ‘Becoming Chinese’ Trend Is Nonsense,” which detailed the racist TikTok trend of non-Asian people pretending to be Chinese for online clout: “Consumption is not the same as care” (@ashleyaviola). This is a strong example of how online identity is often performative rather than lived. To these TikTok users, they are showing how simple it is to “buy” a culture’s aesthetic without being a part of it or ever even having met someone from that culture. It is, once again, simulacra.

This hyper-acceleration of style trends is another example of late-stage capitalism; by shrinking the lifecycle of a lifestyle trend down to a few weeks, the system ensures that the consumer is trapped in a permanent state of inadequacy, constantly trying to buy the next version of themselves instead of having a stable identity (again, the irony of The Mall being seen as a solution to late-stage capitalism is not lost on me). If meaning is personal and perception creates reality, then a self based entirely on an economic system is very fragile. Without the friction of physical locations that comes with actual community belonging, identity dissolves into a homogenous, bland mass (i.e., the shared aesthetics and even mannerisms of many “Disney Adults”). Identity requires friction so we can experiment with what doesn’t work for us to find out what does. Because, if ultimately all we have is our own self-perception, what does that mean when the self is based entirely around an economic system?

One could argue that as long as we are content with the way we see ourselves, the endless cycle of buying, displaying, and being observed may carry its own meaning, even if it cannot stave off the loneliness built into our culture. But in my heart of hearts, I believe that the end result of years of excessive consumerism is going to be a mass collapse of self – a society of bland drones; towns full of lonely people who don’t even understand that there could be a better way. As cultural critic bell hooks said in her book, Eating the Other, “Fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo” (22). Identity requires constraint and context. Without limits, identity will dissolve. In other words, without gatekeeping, capitalism and consumerism will eventually swallow up all identities into a homogenous mass.

But Wait… There’s Hope!

Systems need mobility to function. In this case, the system of society. Think about it: if everyone had a Ferrari, they wouldn’t be “special.” They would be standard, boring. You need something to strive towards. And as capitalism is the current dominant economy, you need to strive towards things by spending in order for the system to keep functioning. If everyone keeps buying literally everything they want the moment they want it, eventually everyone will have everything they could want and there will be nothing left to buy. Capitalism literally has to consume and commodify everything possible or it will starve. This is why, to save The Mall (and perhaps even capitalism itself), we must deliberately slow down or even consume less. This is why we need to practice Deliberate Scarcity.

Think of Deliberate Scarcity as an offshoot of the “Slow Consumption Movement.” Similar to how the Slow Food movement aimed to encourage more balanced, healthy eating and a way to slow the damage of factory farming by prioritizing local, ethically sourced food, the “Slow Consumption Movement” asks us to be mindful of our purchases in order to slow wanton consumption. Deliberate Scarcity takes that messaging a step further, and proposes that by going out of our way to shop in-person, to once again seek out third places, and to embrace analog technologies, that we can reintroduce friction (minor struggles, if you will) into our lives. Friction that once gave us reasons to talk to strangers. Strangers, that sometimes became community. Friction gave us shared experiences, and stories to tell.

I am not arguing that we should become Luddites. This essay is not anti-tech. I am arguing that we need to be “pro-intent” when it comes to our shopping and consumption habits. By choosing Deliberate Scarcity, we can use consumption itself to demand the “socialist-utopian” vision Gruen originally intended. It is a way of forcing the hand of late-stage capitalism to provide the social infrastructure it has otherwise tried to render obsolete.

Visiting The Mall instead of simply loading the H&M app and having your order shipped to your door is a great first step. Making food at home, or ordering it at a sit-down restaurant (or food court!) also creates more friction and chances for human connection than ordering a contactless DoorDash delivery. Who knows who you could run into at the grocery store, or the stranger that you might converse with while waiting in line at the food court. Other examples of being deliberate and practicing “pro-intent” with our technology include embracing analog or obsolete technology, such as CDs and vinyl records, or film cameras. Film creates many opportunities for human connection as there are more steps involved than simply pointing your phone at something (such as buying the film, truly focusing on the photo you want to take, and the developing process). Shopping for physical music in stores also offers the chance to not only connect with other shoppers but also to have conversations about the music itself.

I recently went into a music store for the first time in ages and was able to have a conversation with an employee who was much younger than myself. They liked the album that I was buying and started talking about the artist’s earlier work. As someone who listened to the band when they first came out practically twenty years ago, I was also able to share my stories from that era. It was a small interaction, but a human interaction. And by sheer happenstance, we both learned about how cyclical trends are, which brings me to my next point.

One thing that gives me hope about our collective future is that trends relating to capitalism are nearly always cyclical. Initially, advertising (and therefore consumerism) was driven by print media, door-to-door salesmen, and multi-level marketing (such as Tupperware parties). Door-to-door sales were popular as people either needed to shop locally in their towns or travel quite a distance to find what they were after.

While advertising in media has always (and will most likely always) existed, door-to-door sales were largely replaced by department stores and shopping malls, which brought “the world” to these formerly isolated towns. Those malls ended up being largely replaced by box stores like Walmart and Best Buy, as they were able to import larger volumes of products and therefore sell them for a lower price. Those big-box stores, which once replaced malls, are now facing similar financial struggles thanks to online stores.

Now that everyone can buy practically anything they want at any hour of the day, and the joy of shopping has started to fade, my hope is that more people begin to migrate back to the few surviving shopping malls and locally run stores. Just as there is an uptick in younger generations embracing analog or intentionally using outdated digital technology, my hope is that this longing for real experiences – even capitalistic ones – will defeat the simulacra-dominated path of consumption we have been on.

Conclusion

To summarize, while the decline of The Mall is representative of shifting shopping habits, it is also connected to a much deeper sense of social malaise and is directly connected to the ever-growing loneliness epidemic. By trading the “productive friction” of the physical world for the convenience of the algorithm making choices for us, we are losing many shared social rituals that once brought us together.

In an ironic twist that cynical Gen-Xers would have scoffed at in the 90s, the solution to saving “The Mall” and halting our modern loneliness problem is one and the same. The solution is a conscious return to the intentional and the physical. By practicing Deliberate Scarcity and forgoing convenience for social interactions, we can reclaim our identities that are being slowly eroded by modern consumption driven society. By slowing down and no longer chasing unlimited options, we can start to once again find community and meaning in the things that are already around us.

Works Cited

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Good, Ashley. “What We Lost When We Left The Mall.” Substack, 27 July 2025, ashleygood.substack.com/p/what-we-lost-when-we-left-the-mall.

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Further Reading

Aboutalebi, Sahba. Shopping Mall as Third Place for Senior Citizens: A Case History of the Place Versailles Mall in Montréal. Urban Design and Housing Research Report, Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University, 2018.

Black, Kate. “For Generations of Teens, Malls Meant Freedom. But as They Decline, Are They Really Worth Mourning?” The Globe and Mail, 1 Mar. 2024, www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-for-generations-of-teens-malls-meant-freedom-but-as-they-decline-are/.

Crawford, Margaret. “The World in a Shopping Mall.” Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, edited by Michael Sorkin, Hill and Wang, 1992, pp. 3-30.

Davis, Lizhu, and Sean Seepersad. Effects of Social Interaction and Loneliness on Teenagers’ Mall Shopping Experiences: An Exploratory Study. California State University, Fresno, n.d.

Good, Ashley. “Bring Back Novelty.” Substack, 27 Oct. 2025, ashleygood.substack.com/p/bring-back-novelty.

Good, Ashley. “Let’s Treat the Internet Like Eggnog.” Substack, 1 Aug. 2025, ashleygood.substack.com/p/lets-treat-the-internet-like-eggnog.