Why retrofit
The world stops adding people within this century. Most of the buildings that will stand in 2050 are already built. Retrofitting what exists, rather than building new, is the economic and the environmental answer at once, and the former malls in this database are the largest single-owner sites where it happens. Every figure below carries its source; secondary reporting is marked as such.
The numbers
| Claim | Figure | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| World population peaks this century | from 8.2 billion in 2024 to around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s | UN DESA, World Population Prospects 2024 press release, 11 Jul 2024 | primary |
| Buildings' share of energy and emissions | 32 % of global energy use and 34 % of global CO₂ emissions | UNEP, Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction 2024/25, 17 Mar 2025 | primary |
| Most of 2050's buildings exist today | approximately 80 % of all buildings that will be standing in 2050 have already been built | Harvard Kennedy School, Financing Building Decarbonization, 2024 | secondary; UNEP's global figure is that nearly half of 2050's buildings are not yet built |
| Reuse beats new construction on carbon | 10 to 80 years for a new building 30 % more efficient than an average existing one to overcome the climate impact of its construction | National Trust Preservation Green Lab, The Greenest Building, 2011 | primary (PDF) |
| Embodied carbon | building operations about 27 % of annual global CO₂; cement, iron, steel and aluminium a further 7.7 % | Architecture 2030, Why Buildings? | secondary (cites IEA) |
| US malls: value sits in a few | of roughly 900 malls, 90 % of the value lies in around 250 properties | Bisnow reporting Green Street, 7 Oct 2026 | secondary |
| What mall redevelopments become | of 153 US mall redevelopments, nearly 54 % include residential and 86 % keep some retail | ICSC reporting a JLL survey, 14 Apr 2023 | secondary |
| Housing at malls | at least 192 US malls planned to add housing as of January 2022; at least 33 had built apartments since the pandemic began | CNBC reporting Realogic, 5 Dec 2024 | secondary |
| In this database | 689 malls with a recorded retrofit strategy; 726 sites with housing among the new uses | Retrofit Atlas release 2026-10-21 | first-party, mixed tiers: curated rows from the authors' map, draft rows unreviewed |
Not found, so not claimed
A primary figure for total housing units built on former mall sites; a primary US mall-vacancy rate; the often-quoted "adaptive reuse is 16 % cheaper and 18 % faster" (attributed to Deloitte, also to Donovan Rypkema; the original could not be read). If you hold any of these, send the source.
Who this is for
Architects and planners who need the precedent and the before-facts; property owners and lenders who hold the sites and the loans; brokers who match them; cities that write the zoning; students and researchers building on Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson's work. Audience guides: /for/. Owners, operators and developers already recorded: /owners/. Deals and debt: /deals/.
What the Atlas adds
A record per site with what it was, what it became, who owns it, what it sold for and which policy tools got it done, each value with a provenance chip (how that works). Trends across the database, a map, open formats, an API and an MCP server for agents. Not advice; a reference, in its academic phase, built on the authors' public map and not reviewed by them.
Page generated with the site, release 2026-10-21. Corrections: the form or desk@retrofitatlas.org.