Anonymous Wikipedia Editors vs. Edmonton: The Dead Mall List Debacle
Let me show you the article for dead malls on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_mall
Do you notice anything special? Six entries on the list are from Alberta, with five being from Edmonton!
Bonnie Doon
City Centre
Northgate Centre
Riverview Crossing
Westmount Centre
All of those malls from Alberta have been there since April 9, 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dead_mall&oldid=1218106904
We seem overly represented on the Wikipedia page for Dead Malls. Our first appearance was on November 30, 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dead_mall&oldid=1187590847
Why is Edmonton there so much? It’s an interesting question. Westmount Centre is famously (or infamously) among the first shopping malls in North America. One of our claims to fame is West Edmonton Mall. If there’s one type of urban building that would define Edmonton, the mall would be a good pick. It gets pretty cold, and that’s another factor to consider as well. People like to be indoors when the winter comes.
I’m not about to say these malls are focal points of social interaction and commerce that aren’t dying or deserve to be saved. Malls are a contentious use of space, especially if looking at things from an urbanist perspective. Their inherent design is for automobility. Parking lots are essentially anathema to urbanists and a mall in North America is a building bordered by a massive parking lot. What I will say in Edmonton’s defense on having five malls on the list is that I sincerely doubt we as a city have the most dead malls. There must be another mid to lower tier city in Canada or the US that has worse malls than us. We are on the list because Alberta is higher up in the alphabet for internet search, thus Wikipedia editors looking to fill out the list find us first. Surely.
As someone who can speak on half of these malls (City Centre, Northgate Centre, and Westmount Centre), I can give you my anecdotal experience with these three malls.
City Center is uhh… not great. I remember maybe about 10 to 8 years ago it was pretty nice. I believe I went there for some sort of Chinese New Year’s cultural event. Nowadays though, there is a sterility that is unsettling. It has a very high vacancy rate and I don’t remember it ever being busy there. People tend to exaggerate the horror that liminal spaces can generate, but there is something deeply wrong with City Centre Mall. The emptiness combined with the 90’s to early 2000’s building design makes it feel like a place slipped between the cracks of time. It feels like the setting for an early Heisei era thriller; it’s a place for office workers to get stabbed.
Northgate Centre is the one I think still has relevance. It’s a place designed for geezers to get X-rays. That sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. There is a lot of important floorspace in that mall dedicated to healthcare and medical imaging. It’s like the world’s most roundabout way to create a private hospital. And, if you look at the tenants for a lot of malls, this is what a lot of ‘dead’ malls have transitioned to.
Westmount Centre exists as a food court for Ross Sheppard students. I would know, I was one. It’s fine I guess? I would never want to go back there, but that’s because I don’t ever want to be reminded of High School and not the mall's fault.
One thing I’ve thought of regarding these malls is that they are all close to a major public transit center, a bus hub or LRT stop. That’s good right?
We do not belong on this list five times. There must be a city somewhere in the American midwest that has more and worse malls than us. And that is the only comfort an Edmontonian needs.
-Written by Raymond Li