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

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