| Comment | Hmm, the way you describe this it's like there's been an active societal choice to replace out of town shopping with internet shopping, rather than the reality that internet shopping is simply a global phenomenon that is happening anyway and sweeping all before it.
The difference between out of town shopping centres becoming desolate hell holes and towns/city centres becoming desolate hell holes is that it doesn't impact people a great deal when out of town shopping centres fail. Not in the same way all-encompassing, hard to ignore way as when towns/city centres fail (which we were happy to allow with the advent of out of town shopping a couple of decades ago).
IMO we shouldn't get too worked up about the eventual decline of out of town shopping centres.
The genie is out of the bottle with internet shopping and home delivery, but that doesn't mean we should let our towns & cities continue to rot, especially if it means choosing to put out of town shopping centres on some sort of life support. Which would only harm our dwindling towns and city centres even more.
Embrace the decline of out of town shopping centres, and allow what retail is commercially viable to relocate to town centres. |
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