Too many acres of badly built generic spaces selling the same crap everyone sells but no one needs, surrounded by asphalt wastelands and owned by over-extended speculators who are walking away from their mortgages.
When you put it that way, the home foreclosures don't sound so bad.
From TC Sidewalks:
It also reminds me of how overbuilt the US retail sector is, in general. In her book Big Box Swindle, ISLR author Stacy Mitchell describes how we have way more retail real estate than we would ever possibly need. Our cities and suburbs are way past saturated with big box stores, malls, and everything else under the sun. And for a long time, due to a lucrative regulatory climate (tax breaks for depreciation, up-front tax money from cities), these have been rock solid investments.
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Glenn Miller writes about different sort of commercial abandonment — the Linden Hills Coop moving out of Linden Hills.
What the co-op leaders might be overlooking is what marketers call sensation transference — that is, the enjoyment one gains from shopping in the co-op because it’s located in the heart of Linden Hills. A key part of its brand is its location — it is part of a larger, balanced econ-system.
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Switzerland issues tickets for speeding with fines based on ability to pay.
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What do France, Iceland, New Zealand, Germany and Russia have in common? Same as Denny Hecker. [Both via Visualizing Economics]
