The point that people overlook there is that the aesthetics—indoor mall vs outdoor pedestrian-friendly throughway through a central part of a town—don't actually matter nearly as much as thought, since if you went at 10AM on a Thursday you'd think it was just a nice little downtown with a surprisingly high amount of retail in a small town next to LA.

And there are definitely good cafes, parks, and a library, yet all you're seeing here is still just a lot of people complaining about it. So maybe those aren't the critical components the OP seems to think they are.

There's no reason you couldn't turn the space and structure of a stereotypical 80s mall into a different sort of organizing space, without a whole "we need traditional looking downtowns" push.