The Core

There has been some experiments in converting large enclosed suburban malls to a mix of urban -like residential and retail.  Things like converting the empty department stores to condos or apartments and using big swaths of unused parking lots to make residential streets.  I don't know how successful that has been.

The smaller malls around here are slated for demolition.

"I don’t think anybody really anticipated the decline of the department store to happen as quickly as it did”

I remember in the early 1990s, before Amazon was even a thing, reading articles about how retail space in the US was far above historical norms and far above countries of similar wealth/income. Whoever was writing those articles was all over that story... but I don't think anybody anticipated the decline would take as long as it did ;-)

We spent 100 years building everything to revolve around that car culture

Are you familiar with the idea of "land banking"? I'm not sure I have the right terminology, but some urban planners and their cities have started building, say, parking garages that can be disassembled. The idea is to grab the land and put it to a use that a car culture wants/needs, but built so that if (and they say "when") car culture declines, that space has been "banked" so it can be used for something that makes sense 40 years from now (say, residential) rather than something that makes sense only now but would not be easy to convert (say commercial office space).

Actually, I think the first land bank was in Cleveland or somewhere like that. The Midwest has been dealing with what to do with spaces created due to "deindustrialization" for a long time.

What they may be slow to see in the Midwest is the end of car culture and that the same land banking ideas may need to be applied to shopping malls and vacant lots in downtowns.

I have to say, I remember my first extended stay in Grand Rapids (two weeks in 1998) and I was so surprised that there was so much in walking distance (1.5 mile radius) of where I was - shops, restaurants, grocery stores, big box stores, bookstores and for two weeks I walked everywhere and *never* encountered anyone on the sidewalks except one guy who looked homeless. I have been going back to Grand Rapids every two years for 20 years now (will be there in about three weeks) and I have seen a *little* change, but very little.

This compared to my five years in Madison, WI, where huge numbers of people go everywhere on bike and foot. I knew professional people who didn't own a car. One friend lost his job and he was so anti-car, he was biking seven miles to the airport with his interview suit in his bike panniers and then biking home... at midnight... in February, when the forecast was for 0F/-20C

All that to say that I think GR is going to have a tougher time with the death of the mall than Madison will (though Madison is anchored on three sides by three big malls - East Towne Mall, West Town Mall and South Towne Mall. Or at least it was 20 years ago).

You guys may like some of the info found on this site:
https://www.strongtowns.org/

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/6/6/just-when-you-thought-the-end-of-malls-couldnt-be-any-worse
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/7/13/the-shopping-mall-death-spiral
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/23/bon-ton-gone

>shops in a row

I think you are right.  You need a mix of restaurants and bars (nightlife) with some truly unique small retail shops mixed in.  The kind of retail are shops that people travel out of their way to visit because of WOM recommendations.  It could be handcrafted wares, local artisinal stuff, niche store that knows their niche better than anybody, but they need  to be really unique.  This way they reinforce each other, people coming out of their way to see a retail store are likely to stop for lunch at a neighboring restaurant.   

Part of the problem with department stores, big boxes and mall stores is they are all selling pretty much the same stuff all made somewhere in the third world.  The jeans at Macy's aren't that much better than Sears or Walmart. All the goods are coming off the same ships just different containers and labels.  So for the consumer they can order the exact same thing from Amazon with half the hassle why not?

I FEAR

Well... the parking garage example is simply a case of building something useful today, but building it in a manner that it can be used for something else later without massive cost. It's more a matter of keeping options open while it's still possible.