Skip to content

Shopping Center History

Tom Hanchett, “U.S. Tax Policy and the Shopping-Center Boom of the 1950s and 1960s,” American Historical Review (October 1996), traced the explosion of suburban shopping centers in the mid-20th century U.S. to a federal tax break called “accelerated depreciation.”
The article may be downloaded for a fee or read for free online.

Reactions to the research:

 

Planning and Subsidizing Suburbia

The Other Subsidized Housing: Federal Aid To Suburbanization

Federal Incentives to Planning

FINANCING SUBURBIA – Prudential Insurance and the Post–World War II Transformation of the American City