I'll tell you what I saw. About 15 years ago I went on a month long tour of small town america. Stayed off the highways only took the smaller roads. I drove through no less than 200 towns in 5 weeks. I noticed something after just a couple days. Each time I would drive up on a mid sized town, probably population 20 to 50k, there would be a big ass Walmart on one end of the town on their main road, which would be the one I was driving on, and the downtown former strip would be all boarded up and abandonned. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. From New York to California. Didn't matter what state it was in, it was like this all across the country. Now, it wasn't everywhere, there were exceptions a couple of which stuck out in my memory, but I'd say 80% of the places I drove through were like that. And that was 15 years ago. I left the US 10 years ago and shudder to think what it has become.