Or are they about to become the new centers of "thrift?  That's the question Newsweek asks in a story just posted.  Read it here. 

Newsweek reports that nearly a fifth of the country's largest 2,000 regional malls are failing, and according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a record 150,000 retail outlets will close this year.

One particularly interesting passage was this:  "To survive this new age of austerity, many malls are trying to recast themselves as centers of thrift—hyping low-cost retailers if they have them and trying to add them if they don't. And it's about time, says Stuart Ewen, a City University of New York media professor who studies the social roots of consumer culture. He sees the 20th century as a '100-year barbeque' of resource-burning in an otherwise largely unbroken history of sustainable and thrifty living. 'The word consumption used to be a pejorative, meaning death, destruction and waste,' he says—now 'more and more people are aware of that.'

100-year barbeque?  Wow.  Now there's one quotable prof.

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