As the economy shrinks and consumerism (momentarily?) wanes, many communities — particularly in the U.S. — are left wondering: What ever to do with those tired old malls and empty big box retail stores?
Rob Walker, in his recent Consumed column in the New York Times Magazine takes on this question. (In fact, the entire issue, titled “Infrastructure!” is worth makes for a great read especially if you’re an armchair sociologist or civic planner.)
Quoting from a recent book, Retrofitting Suburbia, Walker points out that the U.S. is saddled with a shocking quantity of retail square footage, compared to other countries. Behold the numbers:
Retail square footage per person
| United States | 20 |
| Canada | 13 |
| Australia | 6.5 |
| Sweden | 3 |
According to the theory of evolution, when there is an overabundance of a resource, some organisms will adapt in order to take advantage of that resource. Will we see this happen in the suburbs of the U.S. and Canada? Or is there just too much square footage to go around?
Author Julia Christensen documents various attempts to recycle big-box retail locations into schools, libraries, fitness centers, churches, etc. at her web site and in her book Big Box Reuse.
In an interview with the Infrastructurist blog, Christensen comments on the local, even idiosyncratic nature of many of these rebuilds.
Q: Part of the book’s innate appeal seems to come from this flip of sensibilities–a symbol of formulaic sprawl being transformed into something unique and local.
A: Well, I think it comes back to the pragmatic. There are so many hundreds communities that are looking at at least one big empty big box and wondering how to deal with the problem. That practicality is, in part, what is appealing about the book.
If indeed America’s retail landscape shifts toward a more localized focus (and who would argue that a change in the nature and use of big-box retail locations doesn’t amount to a major shift?), then retail marketers best take notice. Might this contribute to the hyperlocalism trend we wrote about earlier?
To be sure, these big-box rebuilds are anything but pretty. They’re practical, as most structures in suburban and rural U.S. are. Hormel’s Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota — a former K-Mart — may be the most eye-pleasing project to date.
Photo credit: Clav
