Blog
Love Affair with the Mall Is on the Rocks
Posted by Carol Coletta on February 01, 2009 |
The New York Times declares our love affair with the shopping mall is rocky. But not for the reasons you think.
As reporter David Segal puts it, "We are reliably informed that whatever part of the economic crisis can’t be pinned on Wall Street — or on mortgage-related financial insanity — can be pinned on consumers who overspent. But personal consumption amounts to some 70 percent of the American economy. So if we don’t spend, we don’t recover. Fiscal health isn’t possible until money is again sloshing into cash registers, including those at this mall and every other retailer.
"In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure. And once we’re cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.
So the mall we married has become the toxic spouse we can’t quit, though we really must quit, but just not any time soon. The mall, for its part, is wounded by our ambivalence and feels financially adrift."
What great writing. Long live the daily newspaper and its talented reporters like Segal.
But long live the shopping mall? Hmm... I…
Are Shopping Malls Dead?
Posted by Carol Coletta on November 13, 2008 |
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.
Big box goes local?
Posted by Kristian Buschmann on October 07, 2008 |
Ok, so Home Depot isn't suddenly swapping out inventory for locally produced products, but it would seem that their centralized purchasing model isn't cutting it. WSJ article here. A glut of mowers in the desert and a shortage of power tools where they are needed most was enough to get their purchasers thinking more about what local markets demand. We are already seeing a lot of localization activity in cities, from demand for original products to a backlash at far-flung bottled water. I find it interesting that this trend is affecting even the most un-local of things.