Last year, David Martin was showing a prospective tenant around Brickell City Centre, an open-air mall he helps manage in downtown Miami. The man was an executive from FP Movement, part of the bohemian clothing brand Free People, and Martin was hoping he would decide to lease a shop in the mall. Teens and young professionals have been drawn to Brickell’s palm-tree-lined backdrops and distinctive glass and steel trellis, which are featured regularly on TikTok, along with the elaborate CrazyShake milkshakes from Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer.

Suddenly, as Martin was showing the FP guy around, a man in his early 20s strolled by.

“Oh, look, I know that guy!” the executive told Martin. “That was one of our influencers!”

The serendipitous encounter signaled the mall’s popularity with Gen Z, which was exactly what Martin needed to seal the deal. “OK, my job is done,'” he thought. “I’ll just send you the lease!”

FP Movement ended up opening a store in Brickell a few months later. But the moment was also evidence of something bigger: The American mall, against all odds, is cool again.

Twenty years after they were written off as a casualty of the online shopping boom, malls from the resorts of Arizona to the suburbs of New Jersey are bustling and vibrant. Vacancy rates are the lowest in two decades, and both visits and sales have been climbing steadily for the past three years. And while older shoppers are more likely to have written off the mall, Gen Zers and millennials are embracing them as the hip new hangout. In a 2023 survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers, 60% of Gen Zers said they visited malls just to socialize.

Luxury malls like Brickell are doing especially well with Gen Z. With their modern aesthetic, over-the-top dining options, and limited-edition events, they’ve become more than a chic place to socialize — they’re an extension of the digital lives of young shoppers. “Going to a mall used to be an errand, and now it’s a content opportunity,” says Casey Lewis, the author of “After School,” a newsletter on consumer trends. “The constant need to document one’s life on social media has put a larger importance on the aesthetic appeal of places like malls.”

But for today’s young shoppers, the mall offers more than an Instagram opportunity — it’s a place to practice some of the things that got lost during the social isolation of the pandemic. “Social media helps us refine our taste, but the mall lets us experiment with who we are IRL,” says Claire Lee, a cofounder of Selleb, an online platform that tracks Zoomer spending habits. “Beyond providing a backdrop for content, it’s where we can almost test-drive the personas we post about online.”

If the malls of old embraced sameness — you could always count on a Victoria’s Secret and a Cinnabon — today’s retail meccas want to stand out from the crowd. To succeed today, the mall has to be a destination for young shoppers, something they’ll go out of their way to experience. That’s especially true when it comes to dining. At a handful of malls on the West Coast, the star tenant is Din Tai Fung, a Taiwanese chain that’s garnered a cult following for its soup dumplings.

“Besides being delicious, it’s a very fun experience,” says Arden Yum, a college student who planned a recent visit to Orange County around a trip to the Din Tai Fung outpost at the South Coast Plaza mall. “You write down your order on the paper menu, mix your own sauce, and ask for secret menu items, like the sea salt foam with the chocolate xiao long bao that are filled with molten chocolate.”

Once the epitome of artificiality — a sanitized simulacrum of the town square — America’s malls now serve as one of the last vestiges of real-world authenticity.

Seeing the meal for the content gold it was, Yum and her friends snapped pictures of each dish before digging in. And since they were already at the mall, they did some shopping, too. While waiting for their table, Yum picked up a pair of sunglasses at Gentle Monster, a Korean optical brand.

Celebrity partnerships have also helped position malls as destinations. In 2022, when the YouTube star MrBeast announced he would be opening the first MrBeast Burger at the American Dream megamall in New Jersey, more than 10,000 fans lined up to try his smashburgers and meet their idol. Some had slept in the mall overnight.

Over two years later, the burger joint is still going strong. “Every day at 10 a.m. there’s a line to start eating burgers at this place,” says Paul Ghermezian, American Dream’s chief operating officer. “This is a place people come into the building and ask for.”

All that attention was something of a lifeline for American Dream, which had been derailed by the pandemic only a year after opening. Located 7 miles from Midtown Manhattan, the shopping and entertainment complex includes North America’s only indoor ski slope, a skating rink, a water park, and amusement park rides — not to mention some 450 retail stores. Over the past three years, aggressive targeting of young shoppers has helped it find its footing financially. American Dream says that 2024 was its busiest year yet, with an 11% increase in foot traffic. Once the epitome of artificiality — a sanitized simulacrum of the town square — America’s malls now serve as one of the last vestiges of real-world authenticity.

“The world of physical and digital are intertwined, and allowing the two to live together is key,” Ghermezian says. “If you want to feel the wind on your face as you get splashed on the wave pool, you’ll have to be there in person. And at the same time, it’s going to make some damn good content.”

From a marketing perspective, it makes sense that malls are targeting young shoppers with high-end offerings. Studies show that Gen Zers are splurging more at their age than previous generations did. The global consulting firm Bain predicts that Zoomers will be responsible for nearly a third of all luxury sales by 2030.

Scottsdale Fashion Square, a mall in suburban Arizona, saw foot traffic jump 144% after it opened five high-end restaurants, including a Nobu, and added more luxury brands for men. “We’re trying to deliver something youthful and exciting to the marketplace,” says Kim Choukalas, who manages the mall’s leasing. “The instant gratification of buying at a brick-and-mortar location will never go away.”

“Sometimes you think about old worn-down strip malls that are not very exciting places to be,” says one influencer. “But newer malls are pretty fun.”

In Miami, the Brickell mall specializes in high-end retailers, like Marc Jacobs and Luca Faloni. But over the past year, it’s also made a point of adding more accessible brands, like FP Movement. “The high-low mix is the key thing,” says Martin, the leasing manager. “You might be drawn to something at Saks. But you can always afford something at Sephora or H&M.”

Cosmetics and fragrance — another Zoomer favorite — are also a reliable draw. And while the entry-level cosmetics floor has long been a staple of department stores, today’s shopping meccas are taking it up a notch. In the fall, Nordstrom, which serves as an anchor store for many malls, launched a young-adult beauty section in six locations. Kohl’s, the top-ranked department store among Zoomers in a recent survey, has a partnership with Sephora that racked up $1.4 billion in sales in 2023 alone.

In another play to young shoppers, malls have also amped up their schedule of in-person events. Brickell hosts pop-ups with local chefs. Scottsdale Fashion Square hosts a Monday Mixer series that includes sunset yoga on a rooftop. And the Mall of America — the nation’s largest mall — has added a live-action game show.

But these days, none of the marketing ploys — the live events, the fancy restaurants, the luxury perfumes — would mean anything if they didn’t show up on social media. To grab the attention of young shoppers, Simon Property Group, the nation’s largest mall operator, has launched a campaign with local influencers to create social media posts from its shopping centers set to the soundtrack of “The Breakfast Club,” some of which have gone viral. “Sometimes you think about old worn-down strip malls that are not very exciting places to be,” says Jenny Duan, a college student in California who has partnered with Simon on influencer campaigns. “But newer malls are pretty fun.”

After the success of BeastBurger at American Dream, Ghermezian has expanded the mall’s collaborations with content creators, giving the Twitch stars Kai Cenat and Adin Ross carte blanche to film streaming videos inside the mall. “It’s a different world now,” he says. In the old days, seeing a live broadcast on TV might make you curious enough to swing by the mall to see what was going on. But today, he says, the publicity that matters most has to be produced by the very shoppers he’s trying to attract. The message to Gen Z isn’t just “come on down,” he says. It’s “come on down — and show us what you’re up to.”