There is a fair bit of quality that can go into making a GOOD purely fun thing, and even when it’s pure schlock there’s no shame in that. Some times you want a steak, sometimes you want a burger. Both can be good or bad in their own ways, and neither is better than the other.

That’s a whole other set of problems, I know I’ve read articles about that too but a 15 second google didn’t find it.

If I remember right, the main issue isn’t the building shape like with skyscrapers, it has to do with power and plumbing. They’re only set up for a certain amount of usage of both, and residential is massively higher so you’d basically need to ripe it all out and do it from scratch. And considering malls are predomenantly just in the middle of empty land anyway, at that point you might as well just get the next bit over of empty land and do it from the get go with the appropriate infrastructure.