SUBURBAN DECAY

Of course, we are all familiar with "urban" decay. Cities, industrial areas will always show fatigue. They are the first victims of civil unrest and economic decline. People move out of the city to the urban perimeter. Hence the name: sub-urbia. And it was here — in the post-war years, the age of the baby-boom — that cosmopolitan areas grew. And grew. Forever pushing the boundaries of what constituted a "city".

Here in northern New Jersey, suburbia came to define easier living and affluence. Most everyone had a car. Multiple cars. One for each driver in the household. And shopping centers sprung up. Malls. Strip malls. Indoor malls. Our highways became littered with them. And all seemed good. To live in suburbia meant having the means to be "comfortable". And it still is that way. For the most part.

But of late I've noticed more and more empty stores. Small businesses. And large ones. Chain stores. Box stores. Shuttered. Empty. Littered with "For Sale" and "Space to Lease" signs slapped on the windows. And suddenly suburbia doesn't seems quite the way it used to. Now it looks tired. The shine is diminished. The gloss is gone.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe as I age I notice the aging of what I used to think of as "youthful" America. But maybe it's a sign. Not just that the boomers are getting old but that the towns and shopping centers built for us are going the way of "Main Street" and the downtowns. Maybe the new "freeways" and their destinations can only be found on the digital highway?

There is a sadness here.

All photos were taken in the late summer to the early autumn of 2020. While this time frame corresponds to the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, all of these businesses had been shuttered prior to the Pandemic's onset.