He loved to prowl around it after work. For Walt, the car was really the enemy, so he built a walkable park. I think Main Street USA was Walt Disney's effort to give an urban walking experience to a city that increasingly didn't have one. Malls are urban walking experiences too. Urban centers seem to have lost sidewalk cafes and all those other things that Barbara Flanagan keeps telling us that we need.
Malls can give it back.
You have a pretty positive take on malls. I won't get it if I live to be a thousand. First of all, they should look at the figures, which show that there's a synergistic effect between good shopping experiences. But I also feel that any damage that's been done to downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul was done long before the Mall of America came around. Ours is a culture that favors suburban development.