Because rents at malls started to go up, and urban sprawl meant people lived further further away from the malls, making them less convenient to get to.

So, fewer people are showing up, choosing not to travel as far, or to shop online instead, while rents grow. This pushes retailers out, and robs the malls themselves of the resources or motivation to pay for maintenance.

We saw over the pandemic that commercial landlords were unwilling to give clients breaks on rent, and so a lot of businesses closed. Around here, at least, many of those locations are still vacant, because the demand for rent now doesn’t account for the lack of it later.

So, you know, fundamentally the same thing happening at Reddit.