In America, malls peaked in the late '60s-mid '70s and kinda started to languish in the '80s. Radio Shack/Tandy is long gone here; the last years of their existence were spent being nothing but a cheap attempt at a mobile phone store. Malls in America were replacements to 'department stores' where each floor was a different 'department'. All those buildings were basically many floors with a floor dedicated to different themes, like clothing, hardware, electronics, etc. People got tired of climbing stairs or escalators to get to the different departments so malls were the single-story replacement. Not too many malls here had more than one floor, but larger ones in more touristy areas were as large as a small city. Our Towne Square Mall was a single-floor and quite small compared to the Eastland Mall in Evansville, IN. Towne Square never got very popular and now it's just a leaky hulk with most retail areas bought by a church who has yet to do anything with it so it's kinda weird, you can go in, the lights are on, music is playing, but nobody's home.
Malls in America are dead/dying. Many torn down for newer, more modern-ish 'outlet centres' that are basically lines of individual stores within a larger structure. American culture considers the era of shopping in malls an outdated, obsolete endeavor, replaced with Amazon/online shopping.
I've been doing my shopping lately in Beech Grove/Sebree KY, which is about as close to Mayberry as you're gonna get. Mechanical gas pumps and all. It makes me happy to shop there instead of the blinding white modern interiors of a modern outlet mall. I prefer quaint, warm lit older department store styles. We got one Kroger in an older part of town that's still stuck in the year 1978, with the older glass ceiling front that was once considered modern. I think it was their Bi-centennial store style, which debuted in 1976. Never updated, but super easy to get in and out of since the stock never gets re-arranged (I hate when stores do that).