Mall in downtown Detroit?

[ghettopalmetto]

What would you think about something like Water Tower Place in Chicago? [[7ish floors of retail in one building?)

Malls are dying all over the country, even in areas with the income to support them. The only exceptions seem to be the enormous high-end malls [[Tysons Corner, King of Prussia, et. al.). Why Detroit would embark on an idea fresh out of the 1980s is beyond me.

Lots of talk about retail on these threads lately, but the Gorilla in the Room is that neither downtown nor midtown yet have a sufficient population base [[usually considered to be 20,000 people) to support large amounts of retail. Never mind being able to support risk-averse chain stores.

I think the other part of this discussion that irks me a bit is that it smacks heavily of top-down planning, which we know *always* works so well in Detroit. Is there anything inherently wrong with growing businesses from the ground-up?