The retail apocalypse

@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

jespah wrote:

That's a neat use of the space. And I truly hate malls. Goodbye and good riddance to them.

Malls emerged as a place for people to leave their cars behind and shop on foot.

They have gradually lost ground to strip-malls, which are like malls that you can drive around to different stores instead of walking.

Strip malls are no more than what used to be Main Street in any small town, where most of the shops were located. They are mostly a block or less long. No need to drive from store to store.

Malls are essentially 4 to 8 strip malls lined up along a cross, with perhaps a few offshoots. The big difference is they are indoors, out of the weather.

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I guess we're backwards here, but the mall on the east side of town, Cielo Vista Mall, has been going strong since it opened in 1975. WalMart opened its store (the one where the shooting took place) and a Sam's right next to it in 1993. A big, open air mall, The Fountains, opened on the other side of Cielo Vista in 2013, and it's always packed with people. A lot of stores and restaurants that were in the area relocated to that mall. Cielo Vista put up a big legal fight trying to prevent its construction, fearing that it would take away business, but Cielo Vista is still thriving. A mall opened on the west side of the city in 1988, but it's not doing too well.

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In the (possibly plagiarized words of Bob Zimmerman), 'the times they are a-changing '

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@Sturgis,

GIft cards are a big thing now. Could a lot of retailers have avoided being subject to the retail apocalypse if they offered gift cards?

A lot of retailers have closed their public stores down. Are their online stores still in business?

Sometimes creating an online store is a last ditch effort to save a company. That didn't help Toys "R" Us- they had one up and the company went kaput anyway.

Years ago, after the Crazy Eddie closed down, decades before the retail apocalypse was even an issue, attempts were made to revive the chain with the aid of online stores:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie

Crazyeddie.com and Pricesareinsane.com still wasn't enough to save the company.

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@JGoldman10,

JGoldman10 wrote:

Years ago, after Crazy Eddie closed down, decades before the retail apocalypse was even an issue, attempts were made to revive the chain with the aid of online stores:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie

-FIXED.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

Strip malls are no more than what used to be Main Street in any small town, where most of the shops were located. They are mostly a block or less long. No need to drive from store to store.

Malls are essentially 4 to 8 strip malls lined up along a cross, with perhaps a few offshoots. The big difference is they are indoors, out of the weather.

Both malls and strip malls could be improved by adding more stories to buildings and having residential units within walkable proximity to retail.

Some malls used to be designed with indoor/outdoor breezeways, trees/greenery built into the architecture. Other malls were just giant indoor areas filled with hot or cold air depending on the season and location. Like airports, they wasted energy like it didn't matter.

Someone coined the term, 'Cathedrals of Consumption' to describe these giant spaces devoted to consumerism. Ironically, if they would have just kept the old breezeway/treed/green designs and filled them in with residential units to increase vertical density, they would have been cutting-edge in terms of sustainability.

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@livinglava,

How would this help retailers from being subject to the retail apocalypse?

Most people do not shop in malls anymore.

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@JGoldman10,

JGoldman10 wrote:

How would this help retailers from being subject to the retail apocalypse?

Most people do not shop in malls anymore.

I'm thinking of the bigger picture of what kind of architecture is good as public space within a sustainability paradigm.

Online shopping and delivery are good because they reduce the number/size of brick-and-mortar retail outlets, whose footprint displaces land ecology and creates sprawl and transportation waste.

Still, people need to live and go places. The question is how they can do so in a way that achieves climate sustainability by reducing motor-vehicles, pavement, and sprawl.

The other issue with retail is that retail/commercial buildings tend to waste energy and resources in various ways that attract customers. Customers are impressed by new things, things that cost a lot, and other subtle shows of power, such as the ability to fill a large volume of indoor space with light and temperature/humidity-modified air.

So there are lots of factors to look at when considering how to design human architecture that is climate sustainable. Many malls and other retail outlets are still standing, so it would make sense to refurbish those to include residential units as part of more sustainable design, but the challenge is how to do that in a way that doesn't defy sustainability in the refurbishment process itself.

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@livinglava,

People do not want to go shopping in public these days unless they have to. Some supermarkets in the U.S. have delivery services, but I would assume waiting for someone to deliver groceries to your home takes too long.

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@JGoldman10,

Online shopping is indeed a retail tsunami.

Walmart will now deliver your groceries, ordered online, for free.

Now there are a significant number of people who like to get out of the house and go look and touch what they are buying, but they are, literally, dying off.

I do 95% of my shopping online. (My wife is one of those people who likes to get out of the house and shop "in person" and she does most of our grocery shopping)

I like shoes. I was, at one time, something of a nut about them. I never thought I would be satisfied with buying shoes online because of fit. Whenever I went to a retail shoe store I found I couldn't trust the sizing.

After a couple of online purchases proved "perfect," I kept it up and over about 50 pairs of shoes, I only had to return one and it was effortless.

That clinched it for me.

The number of times I have been disappointed with online sales is far less than the number of times I have been disappointed with in-person sales. Returning online purchases is easier than going to the retail box store.

The only thing that can kill online retail is cyber-crime.

BTW - If you haven't gone online to AliExpress you are losing money. So many products you buy are manufactured in China in the first place and if you buy them in an American retail store (Or online markets like Amazon) you will pay more than you need to.

I'm happy to support Made in the USA whenever I can, but when it is Made in China, I don't see why I need to pay a middleman who does, effectively, nothing for me.

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@tsarstepan,

Well, you schooled him! Rolling Eyes

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

I was, at one time, something of a nut about them.

50 pairs, Finn? Yup, you are shoe nut. Why not consider therapy?

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

JGoldman10 wrote:

Someone I met said the retail apocalypse is "a big turning point in history". Do you agree with this statement?

Have you been reading the posts on this thread?

It’s a turning point, and a positive one.

Why? Because a handful of A2K members think it's positive?

It is a turning point but whether or not it proves to be positive has yet to be determined.

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@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...oh god...the American way never fails to disappoint!

. . . unlike the sarcasm in your post.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I knew that a knee jerk patriot like you would love that one, Finn.

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@tsarstepan,

What's the branch of science called that deals with business models and structure if it's not ergonomics?

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Niels Bohr believed in science, Finn, why don't you?

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@JGoldman10,

Ergonomics is the study of people's efficiency in their work environment. In my experience, this has also meant adapting work environments so people are less likely to get repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. That can mean lifting a desk slightly, or adding a wrist rest or any number of things.

I believe you're thinking of economics.

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@JGoldman10,

JGoldman10 wrote:

People do not want to go shopping in public these days unless they have to. Some supermarkets in the U.S. have delivery services, but I would assume waiting for someone to deliver groceries to your home takes too long.

If that were 100% accurate, there would be no brick-and-mortar stores left whatsoever.

If you are right and the trend is toward replacing all brick-and-mortar retail with online shopping, the question becomes what to do with all the parcels of land that used to house retail stores.

Granted the absolutely best thing to do for environment and climate would be to allow them all the restore themselves as natural ecologies; but humans need things to do and places to go, and you can't leave an area of land completely unmanaged and have it function as a nature preserve, i.e. because thick ground-cover prevents humans from easily walking around it.

So there is a challenge of what to do with developed land that is no longer useful as retail/etc., but which can still be developed in some way for human use, provided it meets standards of climate restoration.

Otherwise Greta Thunberg will stay unhappy Sad

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The retail apocalypse

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