Malls usually have huge, empty parking lots, so it sounds like it's a win:
More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized.
And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car.
Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.
More people got a home to live in that costs less, and some formerly squandered land was better utilized.
And if you start doing other things like legalizing corner stores and neighborhood businesses, rather than designing everything for the automobile Uber alles, maybe some of those people will find they don't need a car.
Also, policy changes almost never happen in one nice tidy package where you do all the things at once, like eliminating expensive and arbitrary parking rules, adding a bunch of transit, re-legalizing neighborhood commercial, right-sizing roads, etc... so there are going to be fits and starts and bumps along the way. Still worth doing though.