It's a retail jungle out there.

In one of the most hilarious – and anti-Darwinian – lawsuits of 2008, the owner of an aging Carlsbad shopping center has sued the city of Oceanside for allegedly rushing its approval of a competing mall.

The reason for this fear of sprawl almost five miles away?

Air and water and traffic! Oh, my!

Westfield Group, owner of Plaza Camino Real and other nice malls near you, is claiming that the city rushed to approve a flawed environmental review for the 950,000-square-foot Pavilion, proposed near a former drive-in theater off state Route 76.

Yes, the environmentally sensitive overseers of Westfield Group have adopted the legal strategy of NIMBYs battling landfills, power plants and tract housing.

As touching as this concern for the ecological integrity of the San Luis Rey River area is, Westfield's obvious ruse to block competition makes a certain amount of sense, given what appears to be the dawning of a new age of shopping withdrawal.

“I'm really struggling with the whole concept that any  more property needs to be developed for retail use,” writes Don Jones of Vista.

Jones, a frequent correspondent, is a longtime student of retailing who once taught the subject at San Diego State University.

He continues: “Virtually all the commentary I read in the business press, and especially from those who claim to understand retailing, say that the nation is over-stored, and has been for a long time. Too much retail space, too many shopping centers, too many retail malls. I agree with them.”

And so do I.

Ever since the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, property-tax-starved cities have competed for sales tax,which means that no city ever meets a retail outlet it doesn't want to sleep with.

North County's state Route 78 is a prime (but not uncommon) example of “the fiscalization of land use,” to use a wonky urban planner's phrase.

For the past 30 years, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista, San Marcos and Escondido have scratched and clawed to increase sales taxes, a more lucrative revenue stream than industrial developments or housing.

Cities cut whatever corners – and checks – they can to attract the retail honey pots.

In a utopian world, cities would let the free market decide how shopping should be spaced. To that end, smart urban planners – and some forward-leaning politicians – have suggested regional sales tax sharing to promote a sensible commercial balance to create more room for housing and open space.

In our dystopian world, however, cities engage in a retail arms race, creating a big-box nightmare, veritable Grand Canyons of cookie-cutter commerce far away from crazy-quilt downtowns, the diverse, walkable, unpredictable places in which the masses, unyoked from their cars, yearn to breathe – and buy – free.

The artificially supported retail markets far exceed normal human desires. Only gargantuan appetites, sustained by credit-card debt, can service a glut of goods arrayed in gentrified warehouses.

“About 15 years ago, there was a study that revealed that since 1945, the amount of retail space per capita had grown between four and five times,” Jones writes. “And that was at the beginning of the big-box retailing, which means that it is far greater now.”

You could say that.

According to Shopping Centers Today, there's 2.5 square feet of retail space per person in the United Kingdom. In Italy, it's about 1 square foot.

In the United States, we roam around in 20.2 square feet, eight times more than the UK.

It's one way to measure the wretchedness of our retail excess.

Maybe help is on the way. (You sure can't find it in the big boxes when you want it.)

The collapse of consumer confidence, which shows no signs of turning around for years, will force many large chains to contract or die.

At best, they'll stay on life support by gouging helpless landlords and cities desperate to keep the sales tax stream from slowing to a trickle.

Last week, I peered through the windows of the abandoned Mervyns and Circuit City in Escondido. Nothing but shelving and the ghosts of Christmases past inside.

“Around the U.S., developers are looking at many malls that now appear surplus and are getting plans together to redevelop them as residential parks tied to some reduced shopping areas,” Jones writes.

As the American way of shopping evolves, there's money to be made in converting the tilt-up cash registers to creative human spaces that lead away from the freeway and back to downtown.

Future generations may thank us for enduring a recession that, while forcing us to deal with a debt addiction, forced us to think outside the big box.

At the least, it's an idea worth shopping around.