A cura di @Guglielma Bon.

Questo articolo di Time parla della scomparsa dei centri commerciali negli Stati Uniti. I luoghi che per un periodo son stati non solo aree dove fare acquisti ma veri e propri spazio sociali stanno chiudendo a ritmo molto rapido in tutto il paese, anche a causa della concorrenza dello shopping online. La cosa ha forte impatto anche sui posti di lavoro

Local jobs are a major casualty of what analysts are calling, with only a hint of hyperbole, the retail apocalypse. Since 2002, department stores have lost 448,000 jobs, a 25% decline, while the number of store closures this year is on pace to surpass the worst depths of the Great Recession. The growth of online retailers, meanwhile, has failed to offset those losses, with the e-commerce sector adding just 178,000 jobs over the past 15 years. Some of those jobs can be found in the massive distribution centers Amazon has opened across the country, often not too far from malls the company helped shutter. One of them is in Breinigsville, Pa., 45 miles from Schuylkill.

But those are workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both. And in the 61 years since the first enclosed one opened in suburban Minneapolis, the shopping mall has been where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping. It was the home of first jobs and blind dates, the place for family photos and ear piercings, where goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors and find something they all liked. Sure, the food was lousy for you and the oceans of parking lots encouraged car-heavy development, something now scorned by contemporary planners. But for better or worse, the mall has been America’s public square for the last 60 years.

Immagine da Wikimedia.