Indoor malls make sense in the American midwest because it gets so damn cold in the winter. Believe me, it's convenient when the temperature is below zero (Fahrenheit!). A lot of the modern malls here in northern California are outdoor because the weather is temperate year round.

The mall is well served with busses and light rail, so actually, a lot of poor and working class people that don't own cars shop there. The counterpoint is that their own neighborhoods are not well served, which I won't deny.

You can certainly walk around the inside - it's great exercise.

I'm not a big fan of malls, but calling it a pit of human despair is a bit much. Despair is violence, unemployment, starvation, those kinds of things. Malls  are a misallocation of material resources more than a human evil.

you are the media you consume.