Growing up in the boondocks of Nashville, TN, I witnessed the slow creep of modernity towards our quiet neck of the woods, first, as we got re-zoned out of irrelevance into Nashville proper, and second, as we had a mall plopped down in Bellevue around the time I was in high school (about 15 years ago). If we build it, the high-rollers will come, they thought. So they did the deal with higher end stores like Banana Republic, Gap, and Williams-Sonoma, speculating that there would be a market for them by the time they got there.
Fast-forward to 15 years later, and those stores are gone. A new, second- and third-tier of tenant has moved into the husk of the Bellevue Mall, a different species inhabiting the host -- gyms, mortgage lenders, discount booksellers and clothing bin stores, a church, and small-time shopkeepers and restaurants. The real estate is so cheap there's even a baseball training center complete with batting cages!
The other strange architectural phenomena are the vending machines that have sprouted up, creating a middle aisle in the corridors built wide for the maddening crowds that never came. The Mall finds its own use for things...
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