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by jrehor 2146 days ago
The US has too much retail space. Per capita, it has 5x as much as Europe (23.5 sq ft in the US vs 3-4 sq ft in most European countries) and 8-10x as much as Asia (2-3 sq ft). We may be looking at a permanent decrease as a result of this pandemic. But even if it goes down by 20%, the US will still have way more than anywhere else.

I think we'll be better off when we use the excess retail space for something else whether it's apartments, warehouses, or offices. But the transition will be painful.
2 comments
refurb 2146 days ago
I’m not sure if retail space alone is a good measure. The US (and Canada) love massive stores like Costco, Home Depot, Walmart. And there are a LOT of Walmart’s.

Those stores seem to be doing just fine during the pandemic (HD has been packed when I went).

Would be more useful to see a breakdown by retail size. Say <500 sq ft, 500-2000 sq ft, 2000-10000 sq ft and >10000 sq ft.

I’d suggest the small places are the ones at high risk (just thinking about typical tenants).

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Leherenn 2146 days ago
I agree, NA has massive stores because they have the space, e.g. population density is much lower than in Europe or Asia
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munk-a 2146 days ago
A while back, in the early 2000s (maybe the 90s), there was all that talk floating around about the ghost Walmarts left over when they'd over-saturate a market with box stores to kill off the competition then scale back to a single mega-location. When that was happening the US did nothing - they didn't try and protect small businesses ("it's the will of the market!") and nor was Walmart even gone after for littering.

This situation exists because the US has been overly complacent for quite a while and happy to ascribe these warning signs as mere minor side effects of the most patriotic American capitalism - this was pretty easy to do while everything was building leverage on leverage and everyone had plenty of bread on the table.

The US economy is rotten to the core, it's really unfortunate but I hope when this house of cards inevitably falls down it at least serves as a lesson for history.

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