This is what we call decay in America.

This more-than-a-million-square-feet two-level mall in Kansas City opened in 1980. It will close this week on May 31, only 27 years later. It has opened and closed in my lifetime and is now deemed to be useless. A million square feet of empty building. The site is being looked at for a new soccer stadium, which means this structure will have to be demolished for the land to be considered useful. In this proof I won't go into the many reasons why the mall failed since
others do so elsewhere. I went to photograph the mall on the Sunday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend before it closes later this week.

On a holiday weekend, few shoppers strolled these halls, and those who did were likely outnumbered by workers. A completely empty end of the mall has been blocked off, and odd silhouettes populate empty gathering spaces now instead of actual people. An abandoned 270,000 square foot Wal-Mart Supercenter also sprawls across the street from this mall. Where does the decay end?

How many homeless people do we have? How many live in inadequate housing? Yet this building is no longer "functional" according to its designed purpose. We let huge malls empty out as we continue to resist construction of enough affordable housing. I say that this mall is more than one instance of decay.