Rick Stein, the founder of Urban Decision Group, says that suburban retail may be ripe for "major disruption," citing a perfect storm of driverless cars, speedy home delivery, mergers, and overbuilt malls.
“In markets like Columbus, which are already ready to deliver tons of stuff fast, overbuilt retail space might not die out in a slow atrophy,” said Jason Sudy, planning consultant at Side Street Planning, who worked with Stein on a model predicting vulnerabilities like loss of revenue or closure of developed commercial properties. “It could be a calamitous collapse.” CityLab reports that this could take many forms, from "a lot of highly visible retail blight right along suburban highway corridors," to looming concerns about the loss of tax dollars upon which many communities rely.
Those [delivery] speeds are getting faster. Already, Amazon offers a two-hour “Prime Now” delivery service for about 25,000 retail items to Prime subscribers in at least 30 U.S. cities. In some of them, including Columbus, customers can pay for delivery speeds of one hour and faster. “One-hour delivery, for every U.S. market, is inevitable,” said Stein, and possibly within a few short years.
