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In the 1980's people wrote about malls as cultural centers, as temples to shopping. Now, they're dying.
Many observers are speculating about the growing trend of so-called dead malls: once-flourishing, large retail spaces that now have a high vacancy rate, low numbers of pedestrian traffic, or the lack of an "anchor" store (typically a department chain). Is it because of economic recession, or stagnant middle-class wages and growing income inequality? Or has the death of these malls been hastened by the rapid growth of online shopping?
It's difficult to say, but the dead mall phenomenon is becoming a cultural item of interest -- for retail historians, urban explorers and documentarians alike. We may read about dead malls in The New York Times or The Atlantic, but film footage can say much more than words.
Is Amazon to blame?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 25 2017, @07:18PM
Your post is rather a thumbnail sketch of the decline of the American middle class over the last 30 years. It rings true.
I note that on the rare occasion I visit a mall in Long Island, there are few Americans there, only recently arrived Indians and Chinese who seem not to have gotten the memo that hanging out at the mall is no longer the cool thing to do. I can only imagine what it must be like for them to be at the mall looking at the clothing and trinkets their extended family and neighbors back home are working themselves to death in sweatshops to produce.
Dunno, maybe what it means is that Americans have reached Peak Stuff. Everybody has the big TV and SUV and house and all the trappings, and now they're wondering, "What next?"
Washington DC delenda est.