• Plight of the family-owned store

    Philip Langdon’s Common\Edge article , The Precarious State of the Mom-and-Pop Store , highlights the beauty of, and challenges facing, an American tradition. “Mom and pop” stores have been under economic pressure for many decades due to suburbanization and the proliferation of national chains. The...Read more

  • Anchors away: Repurposing regional malls to meet new community needs

    The economic effects of the COVID pandemic will accelerate the departure of anchor department stores from regional malls. How can these spaces be adapted to make our communities more resilient in the post-COVID economy?
    For the past two decades, the North American retail landscape has been in a transitional state. Shopping preferences have shifted, to increasingly favor place-based destinations with a mix of uses and design elements rooted in traditional urbanism . Simultaneously, the business model that sustained...Read more

  • After the lockdown, new opportunities for downtown shopping districts

    Main Street areas stand to do well as a result of entrepreneurial activity and market forces in the aftermath of the coronavirus.
    Since the earliest human settlements, the retail experience has evolved to meet the needs of the public. This evolution has taken us from rural markets to towns, cities, suburban shopping malls, big box mega stores, and, more recently, the Internet. But what will retail shopping look like once...Read more

  • The ‘retail apocalypse’ is a myth, and that's good news for the shopping industry and downtowns

    A Google search for the so-called "retail apocalypse" generates more than 13 million results, but brick-and-mortar retail is growing. The data presents a more confident picture for urban and town planners, developers, investors, and merchants.
    This is one of a series of ongoing Public Square articles on the market, technological, and cultural transformation of the $5 trillion retail industry—and how it relates to a continued shift toward walkable, urban living. It is essential to debunk the myth of the “retail apocalypse” and change the...Read more