Going from Commercial to Residential
There's an old saying that, if you have a problem, you've got a problem, but if you have two problems, sometimes they can solve each other.
Right now, we have a shortage of affordable housing and a lot of vacant commercial space, especially in malls. It's gotten to the point that we have a lot of "dead malls" that are effectively abandoned. This is a serious problem because empty properties don't take that long to start decaying. Buildings need continual maintenance to stay in good shape (something that's often passed over in those post-apocalyptic stories and movies in which the protagonists stumble upon a hidden city or underground bunker complex still in pristine condition, such that they can settle in without any significant effort), and vacant buildings tend to attract pests, both four-footed and two-footed. Leave things for long enough, and a building can get to be in such poor shape that it's literally not worth rehabbing, so it ends up being torn down to make way for new construction.
However, it is also possible to convert dead malls into apartment complexes before they reach the state that they're literally not worth putting back into habitable condition. Often this will require changes in zoning to allow residential or mixed residential-commercial use (and there's a long tradition of residential use of the upper floors of commercial buildings), but it's preferable to complete abandonment and deterioration to the point the structure has to be demolished -- or worse, squatters get in and start fires through makeshift efforts to keep warm and cook food, and end up with people dead.
Right now, we have a shortage of affordable housing and a lot of vacant commercial space, especially in malls. It's gotten to the point that we have a lot of "dead malls" that are effectively abandoned. This is a serious problem because empty properties don't take that long to start decaying. Buildings need continual maintenance to stay in good shape (something that's often passed over in those post-apocalyptic stories and movies in which the protagonists stumble upon a hidden city or underground bunker complex still in pristine condition, such that they can settle in without any significant effort), and vacant buildings tend to attract pests, both four-footed and two-footed. Leave things for long enough, and a building can get to be in such poor shape that it's literally not worth rehabbing, so it ends up being torn down to make way for new construction.
However, it is also possible to convert dead malls into apartment complexes before they reach the state that they're literally not worth putting back into habitable condition. Often this will require changes in zoning to allow residential or mixed residential-commercial use (and there's a long tradition of residential use of the upper floors of commercial buildings), but it's preferable to complete abandonment and deterioration to the point the structure has to be demolished -- or worse, squatters get in and start fires through makeshift efforts to keep warm and cook food, and end up with people dead.