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Still lotsa suburban sprawl here in greater Denver, where the very concept of growth management is a foreign one. And it never was that urban gentrification spelled the end of the McMansion. There are more and more people all the time, who have differing housing preferences and differing income levels. New developments of oversized houses (doesn’t every occupant of every house need his or her own bathroom these days?) keep getting built. I can drive into what had recently been rangeland 20 and 30 miles east of here and see thousands of 3,500-plus-square-foot houses.
I fear for “revitalized” downtown retail cores, maybe not quite to the level I fear for the suburban shopping malls, but still, trends don’t look favorable. Urban dwellers shop online, too. What seemed like a swell idea 20 or 30 years ago, and a well-intended one, may turn out somewhat less so.
A few years back I found myself in a high-end audio/video store where for the first time I saw through my own eyes a very large flatscreen on which was showing a very sharp moving image. And I thought to myself, if I was in the movie theater business, I’d be looking to get out of the movie theater business.
I was reminded of a conversation over lunch with the elderly owner/publisher of a newspaper chain I worked for a few years prior. I asked him what he thought this Internet thing would do to the newspaper business. Don’t worry about it, he said. Radio was gonna put us out of business, TV was gonna put us out of business. And now we’re to fear the Internet? We’ve never sold more ads, never printed more pages. We’ll be fine.
The company is a shadow of what it was then.
I suspect that movie theaters will be with us for a good while yet, especially little art houses, but I doubt we’ll be seeing many new multiplexes. Print publications will survive, too, especially the more specialized ones, but the more mainstream, general-interest publications are increasingly an online phenomenon. And I suspect there’s a future for the department store, but increasingly as a sort of adjunct to the retailers’ online operation. And maybe that’s just being wishful.
Still lotsa suburban sprawl here in greater Denver, where the very concept of growth management is a foreign one. And it never was that urban gentrification spelled the end of the McMansion. There are more and more people all the time, who have differing housing preferences and differing income levels. New developments of oversized houses (doesn’t every occupant of every house need his or her own bathroom these days?) keep getting built. I can drive into what had recently been rangeland 20 and 30 miles east of here and see thousands of 3,500-plus-square-foot houses.
I fear for “revitalized” downtown retail cores, maybe not quite to the level I fear for the suburban shopping malls, but still, trends don’t look favorable. Urban dwellers shop online, too. What seemed like a swell idea 20 or 30 years ago, and a well-intended one, may turn out somewhat less so.
A few years back I found myself in a high-end audio/video store where for the first time I saw through my own eyes a very large flatscreen on which was showing a very sharp moving image. And I thought to myself, if I was in the movie theater business, I’d be looking to get out of the movie theater business.
I was reminded of a conversation over lunch with the elderly owner/publisher of a newspaper chain I worked for a few years prior. I asked him what he thought this Internet thing would do to the newspaper business. Don’t worry about it, he said. Radio was gonna put us out of business, TV was gonna put us out of business. And now we’re to fear the Internet? We’ve never sold more ads, never printed more pages. We’ll be fine.
The company is a shadow of what it was then.
I suspect that movie theaters will be with us for a good while yet, especially little art houses, but I doubt we’ll be seeing many new multiplexes. Print publications will survive, too, especially the more specialized ones, but the more mainstream, general-interest publications are increasingly an online phenomenon. And I suspect there’s a future for the department store, but increasingly as a sort of adjunct to the retailers’ online operation. And maybe that’s just being wishful.
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