The other day I went to a local mall to get some high-tops for my son. The place was totally empty. To anyone who has been following the trends, that won’t come as much of a surprise. But beneath the surface, the situation might be even more dire. From the NYT: “The hundreds of thousands of jobs created by new online firms have not absorbed the job losses at traditional retailers. At the same time, the new jobs are concentrated in a handful of large cities and tech hubs.” We have a series of economic and cultural trends, all of which appear to be disadvantaging the same regions.