A Study of Retail Sprawl and the Lives of People in Greater Portland, Maine

By Kevin Burke, Geography-Anthropology Student at the University of Southern Maine

Retail sprawl is a challenging problem for urban communities everywhere. The Greater Portland, Maine region is no exception. The area around the Maine Mall in South Portland has developed into a landscape of consumption and sprawl. Retail sprawl is affecting the economy, quality of life, and human relationship to place here. How and to what extent is this landscape of sprawl affecting the lives of local residents, the economy, and the landscape? The struggle to balance the retail economy, the material needs of people, the quality of the landscape and the community, and the spiritual/psychological needs of people is overwhelming. This research makes sense of the struggle to uncover what retail sprawl is doing to our way of life. It closely examines sprawl in a local context for the Portland area, and answers some questions that are challenging communities.

The Maine Mall: A landscape of consumption