Only a couple of years after multiplying like crazy, a suddenly-slimmer American banking industry is looking to shut down many of its local branches.

For starters, some banks aggressively overbuilt in the years leading up to the crisis, experts note, hoping to capitalize on the housing market boom among other things.

“There is no question there were some areas that were overbranched,” said Scott MacDonald, a professor of banking at SMU’s Cox School of Business. “If you go to somewhere like California, there was literally a branch on every corner.”

As of the end of last June, the U.S. banking industry boasted over 99,000 branches. Five years earlier, that number stood at just under 88,000, according to recent data published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Nowadays however, banks are coping with the fact that branches are generally much less profitable nowadays as banks have become reluctant to issue new loans in light of troubling economic signs like rising unemployment.

Much like how Starbucks’ overextended itself with across-the-street dueling locations, banks now have to retrench. I just think it’s funny how a strategy that so obviously resulted in over-saturation of the market was considered convention-defying genius during the boom cycle, and is now reassessed as foolhardy during the bust. Economic context is everything.

Personally, I wouldn’t miss a nearby human-staffed branch. All I need is a reliable ATM that accepts deposits without envelopes/slips (most of which do now). I just wonder what will move in, in place of those teller windows and such. With both the banks and *$ retreating, only the ubiquitous Duane Reade stores will remain as street-corner fixtures in Manhattan…