The strip mall, in American culture, is more often than anything else an object of derision. It’s an icon of chintzy postwar suburbia and the throwaway culture it nurtured. Strip malls are often described as ugly, tacky, devoid of culture or character or charm. And they’re the flagship native species of a certain type of place: usually, today, a place that has long departed the growth phase of the Growth Ponzi Scheme and found itself sliding downhill into physical deterioration and economic stagnation.

Is it weird, then, that lately I’m finding myself bullish on the unsung strip mall?

A Study in Contrasts: Strip Mall vs. Indoor Mall

There’s a natural study in contrasts, an A/B test if you will, on the southern edge of my city that will help me explain why. An aging strip mall sits across the road from an aging conventional, indoor shopping mall. And there’s no question in my mind which type of building has a brighter future in our struggling suburbs.

Let’s start with a little slide show tour of the strip mall and some of its perhaps surprising virtues: