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I drove around the perimeter of the mall this past Sunday (18th May 2008). It basically looks the same as in your pictures: horrible, rotting, depressing, but a very intriguing place nonetheless.
There appears to be a chainlink fence surrounding the entire property. But if you wanted to get inside, I doubt anything (or anyone) would really stop you. I would never, ever, attempt to gain entry by myself. Maybe if I had some friends along (and some decent weaponry), it would be cool. The Harvey Police Dept is situated very close to the mall. Maybe you could get permission from them, though I doubt they would explicitly allow it.
I come from a rather sheltered upbringing, so it surprises me that there are places in the US that are allowed to look like this. It is a truly disgusting display of neglect and apathy.
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Much of the resources online are dedicated to ‘what happened’ but few delve into ‘why’ - I think an understanding of the events that caused Dixie Square’s failure is as interesting as the downfall of the mall itself. Probably more important than anything else is urban sprawl, which both created and destroyed Dixie Square as well as Harvey as viable places to live and shop.
So what’s driving urban sprawl? It has to be more than just the economy. And it is. There are also other considerations, such as the notion of white flight. The issues of who is moving where also drives what happens with urban spaces. As urban sprawl pushed development farther and farther out, the land value in places like Harvey plummeted. As this happened, the (predominantly) African-Americans living in poor conditions (caused by urban sprawl) on the south side of Chicago moved into Harvey and surrounding areas. Because of this, the remaining whites in Harvey also left. Land values plummeted even more, crime rates rose, and more people left. People began to shop at newer, bigger malls in newer suburbs like Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, or Orland Square in Orland Park. This feedback negative cycle makes places like Harvey worse and worse, while constantly investing in things that are shiny-and-new. No one wins except for greedy developers and the brand new suburb-du-jour, and places like Dixie Square become the retail equivalent of a fossil record, indicating poor decisions in urban planning.
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