From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America

摘要: WHEN THE EDITORS OF TIME MAGAZINE set out to tell readers in an early January 1965 cover story why the American economy had flourished during previous year, they explained it terms that become conventional wisdom of postwar America. The most prosperous twelve months ever, capping country's fourth straight year economic expansion, were attributable consumer, "who continued spending as if there no tomorrow." According Time's economics lesson, consumers, business, and government "created a nonvicious circle: created more production, production wealth, wealth spending." In this simplified Keynesian model growth, "the consumer is key our economy." As R. H. Macy's board chair Jack Straus readers, "When country has recession, suffers not so much from problems consumption." And times like today, "Our keeps growing because ability consume endless. goes on regardless how many possessions he has. luxuries today are necessities A demand built mass consumption brought United States doldrums Great Depression World War II, its strength period impress those retail magnate whose own financial future depended it.1 Although his peers invested great energy resources developing new strategies for doing business mass-consumption economy, historians