Over the past century, the word “blight” has undergone a curious expansion in its denotations. It was originally a botanical term referring to a disease characterized by discoloration, wilting, and eventual death of plant tissues. In contemporary parlance, however, I suspect a far greater number of people use the term in combination with “urban”—a metaphoric
I have chronicled the tireless migration of retail across metropolitan landscapes several times in the past; it formed the central topic of one of my earliest blog posts. Unfortunately, most of my posts have focused on the blight left by outdated retail typologies: the dead malls, exsanguinated big boxes, pockmarked parking lots, blighted strip malls,
Keeping the theme of gently altered signs, I offer a spray-painted follow-up on the “Huge Condos” blog post from two months ago. Though not as funny as the advertisement in Dayton, this sign manifests a completely different kind of error in judgment pertaining to real estate. For developers with comparatively low dependency on equity partners,
This blog is due for another photo montage, and while the subject this month is hardly original, it remains one of my favorite: the always fascinating dying mall. I’ve explored several examples in the past: two in Indianapolis and one outside of Detroit. But dying malls are hardly relegated to the Midwest—all across the country,
In the first part of this post, I explored two primary characteristics that explain why Indianapolis’ only true shopping hub on the south side, the Greenwood Park Mall, remains a retail powerhouse. It defies the odds for the suburban shopping malls, many of which are struggling with high vacancy rates, while hundreds more have already
With all the gloom and doom written these days about dying malls, or long-lived national chains like Circuit City going out of business, it’s time to shift the attention to the occasional success story. The fate of large regional shopping malls has never been more doubtful, since their first inception over 50 years ago. Centers
Of all the major department stores hoping for bang-up business over the holidays (at least compared to the 2008 nadir), perhaps the one that’s been the quietest in recent years is Sears. For over half of a century, the Sears, Roebuck and Company was the number one retailer up until the early 1980s, before the
I recently had the chance to explore dying shopping centers in out-of-state locations that disprove the trends I observed at Lafayette Square and Washington Square Mall. In many regards, the retail decline at these two locations has advanced much further than the aforementioned two, and yet they remain open due to a resilient flicker of
The enclosed shopping mall may be the one urban incarnation from the twentieth century that the cultural elite has maligned from its inception.Intellectuals and social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th often extolled the early streetcar suburbs as a respite from overcrowding, poor sanitation, and social decay they had witnessed in the cities—however,
Almost everyone here has seen the telltale strip mall that has seen better days. We usually surmise that one of two factors has impelled the tenants to flee a shopping center or other commercial district: either the demographics in the area have changed (usually becoming lower income), or a newer, shinier shopping center has opened
Over the past century, the word “blight” has undergone a curious expansion in its denotations. It was originally a botanical term referring to a disease characterized by discoloration, wilting, and eventual death of
I have chronicled the tireless migration of retail across metropolitan landscapes several times in the past; it formed the central topic of one of my earliest blog posts. Unfortunately, most of my posts
Keeping the theme of gently altered signs, I offer a spray-painted follow-up on the “Huge Condos” blog post from two months ago. Though not as funny as the advertisement in Dayton, this sign
This blog is due for another photo montage, and while the subject this month is hardly original, it remains one of my favorite: the always fascinating dying mall. I’ve explored several examples in
In the first part of this post, I explored two primary characteristics that explain why Indianapolis’ only true shopping hub on the south side, the Greenwood Park Mall, remains a retail powerhouse. It
With all the gloom and doom written these days about dying malls, or long-lived national chains like Circuit City going out of business, it’s time to shift the attention to the occasional success
Of all the major department stores hoping for bang-up business over the holidays (at least compared to the 2008 nadir), perhaps the one that’s been the quietest in recent years is Sears. For
I recently had the chance to explore dying shopping centers in out-of-state locations that disprove the trends I observed at Lafayette Square and Washington Square Mall. In many regards, the retail decline at
The enclosed shopping mall may be the one urban incarnation from the twentieth century that the cultural elite has maligned from its inception.Intellectuals and social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th
Almost everyone here has seen the telltale strip mall that has seen better days. We usually surmise that one of two factors has impelled the tenants to flee a shopping center or other
