Henry Grabar
Slate
Cities will weather this concentrated economic downturn because they went through it 50 years ago. Their neighbors may not be so lucky.
One by one, the problems that America has long dismissed as “urban” have marched into the suburbs: crime, poverty, hunger, deindustrialization, drug addiction, civil unrest. The dissolution of community institutions. An aging stock of unwanted houses.
To which we can add: the decline of retail. It has been a decade since the media declared the death of the mall, in a year that would be the first in a half-century that no new malls were built in America. It has since become apparent that the problem is a little bigger than that: Brick-and-mortar retail in general is gasping for breath. The Limited, a women’s clothing store, shut down 250 stores and laid off 4,000 workers earlier this year. Sears Holdings will close 150 stores, including 108 Kmarts, and Macy’s will close another 100. As anchor stores close, more and more malls are entering foreclosure. Financial instruments composed of debt from mall deals are looking as risky as their counterparts in residential debt did before the housing crisis.
23 avril 2017 à 07 h 20
Pas besoin d’aller à Détroit pour s’en faire une idée. Personnellement, pour avoir traversé à quelques reprises Chicago par ses petits boulevards, et anciennes rues principales (South Side), on prend toute l’ampleur du défi qu’attendent nos vieilles banlieues, tant celles de Montréal (Laflèche, Longueuil, St-Hubert) que de Québec (Vanier, Maizeret, D’Estimauville). Ces vieilles banlieues américaines ont généralement 50 ans de plus que les nôtres; Si nous avons commencé vers 1945-50 à en construire, eux, c’était vers 1900. Eh bien, leur cycle de vieillissement peut nous montrer ce qui nous attend dans certains secteurs moins attrayants.
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23 avril 2017 à 12 h 07
Attention! J. pourrait vous reprocher d’avoir fait 100 % des commentaires. Je vais partager le blâme à 50 %. ;-)
Plus sérieusement, le journaliste Leigh Gallagher a écrit un livre sur le sujet « The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving ».
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