The Death and Life of New York City Retail
Manhattan has fewer retail establishments now than in 2001. But there are other boroughs, and other uses of storefront space.
Ready and waiting.
Photographer: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images
For a boomtown, New York City sure does have a lot of empty storefronts. This phenomenon has been getting lots of attention lately — most recently in a big New York Times photo essay of boarded-up shop windows all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.
The juxtaposition of an otherwise still seemingly healthy city economy and such visible signs of retail distress has generated many attempts at explanation. The two main lines of reasoning can, I think, be summed up as (1) affluence and greedy landlords are killing the city and/or (2) online shopping is killing retail. (To these I would add my suspicion that New York’s uniquely friction-filled and inefficient real estate environment plays a big role, too.)