There is a growing number of what real estate professionals, architects, urban planners and Internet enthusiasts term "dead malls." Matt Roth for The New York Times, Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times
Since 2010, more than two dozen enclosed shopping malls have been closed, and dozens more are on the brink, according to Green Street Advisors, which tracks the mall industry.
Like beached whales, dead malls, as they are called, draw fascination as well as dismay. A popular website is devoted to the phenomenon — deadmalls.com — and it has also become something of a cultural meme, with one particularly spooky scene in the movie "Gone Girl" set in a dead mall.
With income inequality continuing to widen, retail chains like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney have faltered, taking the middle- and working-class malls they anchored with them.
Many attribute the rise in e-commerce to the death of some of these malls, but that may not paint a full enough picture.
Instead, the fundamental problem for malls is a glut of stores in many parts of the country, the result of a long boom in building retail space of all kinds.
"We are extremely over-retailed," said Christopher Zahas, a real estate economist and urban planner in Portland, Ore.
Read more:
The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls
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