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Part of the retail decline is partly because consumer credit kept people spending. This also kept retail space expanding. While the English speaking world generally saw this happen, it was especially bubblicious in the states. Long story short: as everybody but the 0.01% gets poorer, this that exposed a huge oversupply of retail space. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/retail-meltdown-of-2017/522384/ [Scroll down a bit and they have some sort of metric of retail floor space per person.]
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Nov 23, 2017 17:26
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 18:38 |
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So what are the signs of a dying mall? Strangely in Canada a bad sign is government offices moving in. My experience is kinda limited, but another thing that (used) to mean a dying mall was a call center moving in, - usually with hefty government subsidies. This was in a particular province in the early 2000s tho Though in Brampton, a large mall is also the 'city center' - directly off it are government buildings like offices, the Library, as well as city hall and the main police station. I'd imagine that'd make the mall a smidge more resilient
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Nov 24, 2017 02:44
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This dead mall opens with a convincing demo of hell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOlffr73fuM
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Nov 24, 2017 03:00
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:it's pretty much the only thing you can do with those facilities once all the stores are gone. although I've been to indoor paintball arenas, and they're loving disgusting. I'm picturing hydroponic farms Or maybe drone racing tracks (I've been playing Mario Kart lately)
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Nov 25, 2017 21:02
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Pener Kropoopkin posted:if you want to repurpose them for indoor agriculture, it'd be more efficient to just demolish the mall and construct facilities that are purpose-made for maximizing production. The main reason to keep the mall around for any business is to exploit its novelty value. Good to know. I figured they were kinda like that Flak tower in Berlin, y'know, too expensive to tear down? Now that I've said it out loud I see the flaw in that thinking Scrub-Niggurath posted:turn them into labor camps for the poor Sanctuary District at the Galleria
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Nov 26, 2017 18:08
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BRB, going to write a op ed under David Brooks' biline how society will fall apart now that women do not have oppressively thin mannequins to aspire to Possibly I'll support this by saying the Ancient Greeks and Romans built statues
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Nov 26, 2017 21:31
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This fits into this thread. a wonderfully erudite woman mocking the poo poo out of McMansions: http://mcmansionhell.com/post/161329177461/50-states-of-mcmansion-hell-harford-county
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Nov 27, 2017 22:04
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Somehow there is a Wikipedia article on dead malls, and it actually cites Newsweek "declaring the indoor mall obsolete in 2008."
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Nov 27, 2017 22:45
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The Muppets On PCP posted:outdoor shopping centers, especially destination ones like outlet malls tend to do okay in part because their profit per square foot is something like 4-5x that of indoor malls How is this possible? It's the same goddamn stores, embedded in a vast parking lot
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Dec 10, 2017 21:55
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etalian posted:It's pretty hilarious how the US mall concept was created by a immigrant who wanted to create the natural organic feel of European cities like Vienna and Paris. If you consider a french-as-hell name Chevrolet is "the heartbeat of America" it fits very well For a long long time in North America, GM truck ads had Bob Seager's "Like a Rock." I heard the song on an oldies station about a year ago, and GM unintentionally pranked themselves again, because the song is about a old man who's best days are behind him remembering how he used to be Automotive brands are going though similar problems as retail. Essentially, there are affordable cars, richer cars, and a very large space in-between that used to be gravy for lots of manufacturers, we'll call it 'near-luxury.' A few things have happened in those markets in the past few decades. For one, Lexus (and other Japanese manufacturers) entered the market in a big way. In the 1980s, St. Regan, free market messiah, was very protectionist to the US car market, restricting the Japanese as to how many cars they could import. While not the cause of this move, the Japanese did the rational thing and went upmarket (for better profits on each car.) Lexus in particular when they launched the LS400 was daunting to the old European players, because it was essentially the best car in the world, built with the quality that formerly had been a province of Mercedes-Benz - at two thirds the price of a MB. So the top guys (ze Germans) lowered their prices (and sometimes their quality) and by the ends of the 1990s had "full lines of vehicles" - IE cars stretching the full length of luxury *and* near luxury. Meanwhile, the Japanese, Lexus particularly, became really great at offering good value for money on the near luxury market. These two trends basically killed the marginal near luxury marquees: Mitsubishi offered some goddamn car in that line (the Dimante?) as did Mazda (forget its name but it had some very weird, innovative engine in it) Oldsmobile, Saab, and Mercury. Acura has struggled ever since they made a car that was just too good - and then stopped making it. Infiniti exists still because it can bogart stuff from Nissan and Renault. Lincoln because a high trim level on a Ford Expedition after spending two decades as a high trim level on the Ford Crown Victoria. Anyway, I don't think anybody's getting misty eyed about this. I just want to point out this is very similar to what happened to retail - the marginal players get squeezed out when the market shifts and goes south. Anyway, I'm not trying to troll y'all with tales of creative destruction, I'm just trying to point out that a lot of issues that circle around retail also circle around cars. The biggest one is will be a shocker to the thread: people not having money to buy cars, which guess what, is concentrated in younger generations. Car makers have been wringing their hands about it since I've been in university: nearly all car buyers are still boomers, and the amount of younger people buying (new) cars keeps declining. They've tried a lot of things over the years, and this has resulted in - Boomers buying hip and kooky cars marketed to young people. The two brands that stick out for me are Scion and Mini. Both in theory targeted "the Youth"; both became hits among the boomers. Now, thanks to the post 2008 economic catasterfuck, there is actually *some* recognition among people that it's not those drat irresponsible youth and their cellphones and their electric music moving them away from cars or "all youth live in trendy urban areas and TF have no need of cars" - it's "oh poo poo these people cannot afford to buy new or used cars anymore, they are too poor." Obviously it's still mostly a bunch of sundowning handwaving that amounts to "gently caress you got mine" but there is some recognition among younger car enthusiasts (and some even not so young) as to what is up. Another key factor is - financing. Naturally, because people don't have the money, they can get financing instead. The subprime auto-financing sector has been growing at a pace (if not as a size) like subprime mortgages did before 2008. This continuing of consumption via debt will not be at all familiar to readers of the retail apocalypse The third is that there are still a lot of vulnerable nameplates and manufacturers. Auto Manufacturing is a very globalized industry, but in a North American context at least, exists can be swift and brutal. Pontiac is dead, Suzuki is gone from North America, Mitsubishi is here only because the head office in Japan refuses to give up (actually if you check out Mitsubishi they went through a hilarious bubble all their own, deficit financing everybody who could fog a mirror, then have their resale values crash when those Funny story: Chrysler/Dodge were the hot domestic auto-makers in the late 90s early aughts - so naturally the CEO used this to negotiate a takeover by Mercedes-Benz. He got a huge payoff (along with all of those dumbass financial talking heads talking about what a awe-inspiringly brilliant idea the 'merger' was, much like the Warner Brothers - AOL 'merger'.) Chrysler/Dodge, meanwhile, was mismanaged from that point on. The Germans were hilariously cheap in developing new products for Dodge that didn't synergize with old technology from MB - which on the whole was not a good match for Dodge. MB sold off Chrysler/Dodge for cents on the dollar in the mid-2000s to a venture capital group named Cerberus. They obviously wanted to sell off all the useful assetts and then scrap it, but the 2008 economic catasterfuck derailed that ambition. Dodge declared bankrupty, and quite likely would have been liquidated at this point had the Obama Admin not stepped in with emergency financing. Their rationale was simply that Dodge going Chapter 7 would bankrupt many second tier suppliers, which would like cause GM to liquidate (having also declared bankruptcy) and possibly bankrupt Ford as well. So the Government arranged a deal that sold Chrysler/Dodge to Fiat. For $1. Really. Fiat now owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep. Since the sale, they've tried to make those brands work for them in a global context, not the least of which means returning Fiat and Alfa Romero to North America. (That's a tale in of itself, but suffice it to say Fiat is actually one of the smaller of the global auto conglomerates and is afraid of Korean and Chinese competition undermining its cheap stuff, which of course is a very big deal for the nation of Italy.) Anyway, Chrysler is exactly the sort of 'near luxury' brand that's going through an extinction event, not to mention Dodge itself, which is well positioned in several products but struggles to be a full line maker. (After years of dog-fuckery by previous owners, Dodge has given up selling small cars.) Ideally, North American products should be sellable in Europe and Asia, etc, and that is a uphill struggle when your best known cars are a full-size pickup, a big minivan, and the car Walter White drove when he fully embraced his villain persona. PS> Telsa stock value is assessed as the same as Ford - and Telsa doesn't understand how to make cars as well as say, the old Chevy S-10 plant did. Ford's CEO was forced to step down despite earning 10 billion in profit that same year because he didn't do enough to make Ford more like Telsa so there's that aspect as well
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Dec 12, 2017 00:47
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I know, 
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Dec 12, 2017 00:47
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Ron Jeremy posted:what was this Acura that was too good? They made a car for a long time called, appropriately enough, the Legend. It was kind of a larger, luxurious Accord, built in the best Japanese tradition to be nearly indestructible.
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Dec 12, 2017 15:49
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General Dog posted:What are the defining differences between "luxury" and "near-luxury"? You ask a mouthful there. Two words, 'sport' and 'luxury' are abused to the point of meaninglessness in the car industry. Pretty much every vehicle that isn't a full-size van is described as those two things. That said, I'd argue it has to do with if the car was actually engineered to be an expensive car from the start, or if it was made to be more expensive by options and branding. Take the LS400 for an example of luxury. The engine it used was a 4L V8, famous when it was introduced as it was the first car engine that cost more than a billion dollars to develop. It was rear wheel drive. I think it might have shared its platform and drivetrain with one or two other cars, but they were all similarly expensive. Making really high quality cars with bespoke components, etc, costs a lot of money, so it costs a lot of money to buy. Then take other cars, which cost like a luxury car but often are built from humbler components, the Lincoln Navagator for example. It uses the Ford Expedition fullsize SUV platform, which is derived from the F-150 pickup. I've no idea what the most basic F-150 is, but compare that to a modern Navigator, which probably costs around 4x that, and you're getting an idea of the profit margin a luxury truck can get for its maker. Sure, the Navigator has a fancy V8, different trim and interior, maybe even built on a separate line to higher quality control standards. But it is still the same basic vehicle, just one sold at a huge markup. I see the near luxury market as being that - mass-market components being sold at premium prices. During the last automotive winnowing in the early 1980s, supposedly Ford kept out of bankruptcy thanks to the Lincoln Town Car. Made on the Crown Victoria platform, but selling for twice as much. And of course, you can find all sorts of overlap in this screwy Venn diagram - makers that mostly sold re-badges but did a few bespoke models, and luxury car makers using mass market stuff for their cheaper offerings. Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 17:54 on Dec 12, 2017 |
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Dec 12, 2017 17:51
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Ron Jeremy posted:Isn't the current RL/RLX the same thing? Luxury trimmed Accord? Good question, I had to check wikipedia. It says they are separate platforms. gently caress me the Legend was a bespoke platform as well
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Dec 12, 2017 18:14
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:i like the car posts Thanks! I think I have one or two more posts that keep with the overall theme of the thread if it sparkles for everyone.
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Dec 13, 2017 16:29
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This is a truck So, in the early 1970s America got hit by the first gasoline crisis. At the same time, environmentalism had become a mainstream concern - President Nixon (!) saw this, and wanted to make it solid Republican territory. To that end, the first measures to restrict auto emissions, and to try and encourage the increase fuel economy were enacted. The former, after a shockingly lazy start from domestic automakers, (to the point that Soichiro Honda several times embarrassed the domestic automakers by making their cars emissions compliant after the domestics declared it literally impossible) has been an enormous succsess. Air quality in cities went way up, and last I read, the California standard - SULEV - for tailpipe emissions is 99.99% less than what a late 1960s car would put out.* This is a car  CAFE, not so much. CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) was I think initially a well intentioned idea - but one that in the long term did a lot to gently caress up cars in North America. CAFE sets averages for a automaker to meet across its fleet. T Now, the whole idea of the average was to allow automakers to be able to subsidize the gas guzzlers in their lineup by selling more extra efficient cars - a move that basically had to happen because domestic automakers made most of their money from big cars, and if you threw them into the new fuel efficiency pool right away the shock might kill them. he first year it was implemented, it set the CAFE average at 18 MPG. Next year, 19 mpg. CAFE introduced a separate ratings for light trucks that same year, with 17.2 for 2wd trucks, and 15.8 for 4wd. Back in the 1970s, obviously, most people actually drove cars, and the people driving light trucks did so because they used them for stuff, so making such a distinction wasn't unreasonable. But, this of course, created an artificial distinction in light vehicles - and one got to be less fuel efficient than the other. So guess what happened:  Of course, compared to the barge in the second photo, mileage went up.  The two dramatic upticks in economy naturally happened under twin fuel crises. The downward movement of light trucks in the late 1970s (and the cars going flat) was fuel prices returning to 1970 levels - before the revolution in Iran and the subsequent price spike. The 2008 catasterfuck and the speculation driven energy price spike before it also got economy higher. Looking at that chart, it looks like CAFE saved domestics from their own worst excesses when energy was cheap (Like basically the entire 1990s.) CAFE if we're talking positive also moved gas guzzlers from relatively cheap to mostly expensive. Luxury Trucks, that old familiar blasphemy of the 2000s, were created partially because of CAFE. An expensive gas-guzzler doesn't drive down your average that much, and if it does, it's like having too much money in your wallet: a expensive vehicle with fat margins can easily pay those CAFE fines the law prescribes. And, it becomes another feature to distinguish you from The Poors. To get back to the switch from cars to trucks, it'd be wrong to say this switch was **entirely** because trucks had easier standards. (I didn't realize this but 4wd trucks hilariously had their own, even softer standard until 1991, when all light trucks were lumped together.) This switch also had to do with the fact that "car" and "truck" had legal definitions, and so by gaming the definition, you could get additional benifits. The Chrysler (formerly Plymouth, a brand so sad I forgot about it in the previous post) PT Crusier is in fact classified as a light truck. Having a modified Neon in your lineup to drive your truck average way up allows you to sell more loaded Dodge Citadels or whatever. Because of the increasing meaninglessness of the distinction between cars and trucks, CAFE was revised to include a “footprint” formula – basically saying the bigger your size, the less stringent the fuel economy standard you need to have. This was done of course with the input of manufacturers. The result is that tiny, fuel efficient cars, say, have very stringent standards to improve to in the future – but say fullsize trucks have considerably more modest goals. All of this was done under the Obama admin, BTW – in a classic triangulation move, he wanted across the board better fuel efficiency standards, and the domestic manufacturers wanted their businesses protected. The long term 2025 goals are pretty drat ambitious, I admit, but the system they are using to achieve it incentives larger cars (or more precisely, crossovers and SUVs) over smaller ones. Take small pickups, for example. They do not exist anymore. The last holdout was the old Ford Ranger, which would have incredibly difficult mileage standards to meet in the future. In contrast, the most efferent F-150 is not as efficient as the thrifty version of the Ranger, but under the CAFE footprint, it meets all its goals and then some. Ford is apparently making a new Ranger, and Ford is going to sell it around the world – but not North America. If you turn back the clock for a minute and imagine a different way of doing things, the flaws in CAFE become obvious. Imagine if the USA did what Europe and to a lesser extent Canada did: after the first energy crisis, install a gasoline tax to send the message the cheap energy days are over. Now Suzuki does what it does everywhere but North America: starts importing some of its cool, very efficient small cars. Then, if you wanted to save on gas, you could – buy the car that saves you gas. It's a direct market incentive, rather then this system designed to protect domestic automakers and their truck production. And it's also very clear that price spikes are actually the most effective way to get fuel economy to increase, as unless that pressure exists, there's no incentive for automakers to spend money on it. (One good thing about that mid-2000 fuel cost increase, as well as the time's expections of 'peak oil' was that lots of new engines and transmissions were engineered by automakers, retiring old designs that sometimes persisted 20-30 years – on the domestic side.) There's other reasons, of course, why Suzuki probably would not just start importing Kei cars if they could – crash regulations being the biggest one, though how North Americans drive and where they drive are also factors. But if we're talking fuel economy, one more thing:  The Honda CRX (the two seat sport coupe version of the era's Honda Civic) was sold in a special HF, or fuel economy version. Thanks to its small motor (a 1.5L four) and excellent aerodynamics, it got 40 mpg in town and 60-70 on the highway. Now you couldn't do this today, (crash regs would frown on such a lightweight body) but this is normal steel and a completely conventional drivetrain getting that mileage. If you want more fuel economy and are flexible on regulation, it doesn't require moon tech or super-expensive solutions.
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Dec 14, 2017 04:29
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LastInLine posted:the fact is that gas is too cheap for americans to care about fuel economy and every incentive is to trade off against it when it comes to size, power, type of vehicle, etc and if anyone did build a fuel efficient car in the vein of the crx hf or the geo metro it wouldnt sell for poo poo This is true without a doubt Though, horrible story, I remember reading on CNN around 2008 that there was somebody fixing up and "flipping" Geo Metros
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Dec 14, 2017 16:26
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LastInLine posted:id buy a metro in good condition without blinking esp. a convertible The convertible is legit cool now Also, just FYI, this thread may interest you
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Dec 14, 2017 22:10
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life is a joke posted:The last mall I went to was probably 5 years ago, long after malls started dying, and the place was bustling at all hours. It looks like it's doing pretty good just by doing a quick search on google, maybe some malls are ok? I'm going back to MA in a few days, maybe I'll check out old Square One Mall for old times sake - I've watched so many of that dudes vids that I'm afraid every mall is a desolate hellscape. Canada has the same credit fueled overabundance of retail space, just like half of what America has. I've been to square one, tho, and it has an enormous theater and is a huge bus terminal besides. Speaking of GTA malls, I think Yorkdale has managed the crunch by focusing on markets that still sell - in Yorkdale's case, clothing for richers
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Dec 15, 2017 02:47
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Dec 15, 2017 19:34
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Volcott posted:Why would you name a mall after the place that grows half of Asia's opium. A nickname for southern Ontario around Lake Ontario is "the golden horseshoe"
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Dec 15, 2017 23:13
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Baloogan posted:my posting is augmented The malls are doing fine, one of the triads has their night club there
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Dec 16, 2017 18:45
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 18:38 |
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Arise, thread! Malls are changing their names due to the association with 'doomed' and 'failure'
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Jan 12, 2018 19:50
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