The Consequences of Nigeria’s Metro Migration

After the end of World War II, popular media often portrayed American families as accomplished, happy, and most importantly, back together. In fact, they were really happy to be back together. In the post-war economic boom, couples were industriously popping out babies and moving their growing families out of the cities and into the suburbs.

With them came their spending power, of course, putting a dent on Main Street retail stores.It didn’t take long for businesses to follow people out to the suburbs, resulting in the birth of the iconic American shopping mall, which combined retail shopping, food service, and entertainment into one large, indoor building.
Thanks to President Eisenhower, interstate highways were blooming across America, too, and these massive retail complexes on the side of the road soon began to attract traveling consumers and helped prop up domestic tourism.

As America grew, so did the reach of malls. For decades, malls were the best place for consumers to purchase clothes, toys, games, and anything in between — making holiday shopping that much easier.

Over time, however, malls became too plentiful. America has by far the highest retail square footage per capita than any other country in the world at 23.5 square feet per person (Canada is next in line at 16.8 square feet). The growth of online shopping with the advent of the internet became a challenge as well.
Amazon and other e-commerce companies have now become dominant while brick-and-mortar stores have eaten into each other’s profits. “Anchor stores” like Sears and JC Penney have been forced into bankruptcy while other popular stores have trimmed down their in-person offerings and invested more into the online avenue to avoid a similar fate.

Malls are not completely dead, and even the ones that have lost most or all of their business have transitioned to selling people experiences alongside goods. Some mall spaces feature Instagrammable backgrounds and settings to bring people in, hoping they’ll buy a thing or two on the way out.

That’s one advantage retail stores will always have over online shopping: an exciting in-person experience.
Busy consumers will almost always gravitate towards buying online as the convenience gives them more time to work or spend with their families. But when combined with an experience, shopping turns into entertainment.
This puts malls in competition with movie theatres, concerts, and comedy shows rather than Amazon or Shopify.
That doesn’t mean that there is room for thousands of malls around the country, however. The experience-laden mall may only survive in centralized and thriving areas.
Enter mixed-use commercial development.
As post-war industry followed families out of the cities and into the suburbs, so too has today’s industry followed the money. Cities large and small have turned to mixed-use developments as a one-stop-shop for living, working, eating, and entertaining — allowing nearly all consumer needs to be met within just a short walk’s time.

As Coby Lefkowitz thoroughly explained, the rise of the mixed-use development is a combination of many factors. A widely accepted set of U.S. building codes is why these massive complexes all look the same no matter what city or state you are in. Developers will try to get cute with color schemes, but they aren’t fooling anyone. These developments are all “five-over-ones”: five wood stories sitting on top of one story of concrete.

Businesses occupy the bottom floor while residents live in the five floors above.
From a developmental perspective, the mixed-use model is genius. Building vertically saves developers money on land and maximizes renting space. These areas become an economy of their own, with the apartment renters going down just a few flights of stairs to eat lunch or buy goods.