Malls and Lifestyle

We now often hear "I will go malling" instead of "I will go shopping" or "I will go window-shopping."

Malls have replaced some centerpieces of our lives. We now go to malls to relax instead of to the beach. To eat good food, we either had a cook-out or we went to a good restaurant; now we go to malls. Some malls provide worship services, so many people now go to malls to worship, not to the church.

Is this development good or bad? Is there a dislocation, a disconnect here somewhere, somehow?

In terms of products for example, can malls be viewed as the quintessence of disconnection from the surrounding villages since the products in malls are mostly over-packaged, over-processed, and have been transported over hundreds of miles that started abroad, not in the surrounding villages?

If malls are the wave of the future, how can they accommodate the message and the practice of frugality, simplicity, thrift, self-sacrifice, self-denial, and sublimation in the combination of gloss and hype and consumerism and sometimes hedonism that malls project to the consumers? Or am I just oversensitive and alarmist about the role of malls in our lives and lifestyle, in their relation to the local economy, and in the shaping of our values and culture?