I get a lot of weird looks when I say I LIKE old, slightly run-down strata-titled malls. The presence of these old malls explains some of my favourite places. Take the Katong/Joo Chiat stretch for instance: having i12 Katong and Parkway Parade there are nice. But what do I especially like in the area? Roxy I & II, or Katong Shopping Centre. And it’s not just some sense of nostalgia, or the near-universal fascination with old and emptying malls (of which there are whole YouTube series by the way). In fact, The Straits Times recently ran a piece on how Katong Shopping Centre went from a shopping paradise to a building dominated by maid agencies, a good reminder of how these strata malls evolve over time, and why their mix of “random but useful” services is so hard to replicate in gleaming new complexes. I’m a firm believer that areas with mixed-age construction (i.e., some old, some new) are the best for daily living....