It often follows the new urbanist school of thought, which aims to undo the sprawl and flight from urbanized areas that occurred in the US and Canada after WWII.
Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, professors of urban planning and architecture at Georgia Tech and CUNY, respectively, wrote the book on this phenomenon.
[1] In short, there are several issues that modern society faces that are either caused by or exacerbated by car dependency.
These challenges include, but are not limited to: disrupting automobile dependence to promote public transit, "improve public health, support an aging population, leverage social capital for equity, compete for jobs, and add water and energy resilience" per the Congress for New Urbanism.
In a case study of the Belmar neighborhood of Lakewood, Colorado of the former Villa Italia Mall, the retrofit of the property resulted in the following: There are several other cases of successful retrofits, including downtown Silver Spring, Maryland; North Hills in Raleigh, North Carolina; and CityCentre in Houston, Texas.