Big Cities Big Boxes

Judith D. Schwartz Opposes Wal-Mart's Using Expensive P.R. to Woo Communities While Firing Workers Who Try to Unionize

My fellow ASJA member Vermonter Judith D. Schwartz has forwarded to me her excellent recent letter opposing Wal-Mart's using expensive p.r. to woo communities while it also fires employees who try to unionize. Her letter appeared in the Bennington Banner and the Rutland Herald:

To the Banner,

Two days after the open forum on a revised big-box cap, an attractive brochure from Wal-Mart arrived in the mail. This glossy PR piece, full of smiling faces and a few strategically draped American flags, asked that I send in a card pledging my support for "an expanded Wal-Mart in Monument Plaza in Bennington." To clinch the sale, there were claims about the benefits such a store would bring to the community.

In fact, the numerous studies conducted on Wal-Mart's effect on communities show these claims to be false. Any tax revenues added to town and state coffers are more than offset by the huge drain due to, among other factors, Wal-Mart's dependence on social services like Medicaid and other forms of public assistance because the megastore pays low wages with little [often no] benefits. Without any context, however, the brochure leaves one with the impression, "Wal-Mart cares about our town."

New York Post's Ryan Sager Thinks New Yorkers Hate Unions, Prefer Wal-Mart to Neighborhood Groceries, and He is Wrong on Both Counts

New Yorkers love their neighborhood grocery stores. Don't look for that fact in the New York Post. Grab the August 14 issue of neighborhood paper Our Town for a story called "The Tale of the Vanishing Grocery Stores," about battles New Yorkers are waging to keep neighborhood supermarket chains like Gristede's and D'Agostino's. From Friday's New York Post you could never guess that grocery stores are part of the New York way of life. A violently pro-Wal-Mart column by Ryan Sager, Cheap Groceries: The Real Gripe on Wal-Mart, never mentions neighborhoods. What does he say about those New York supermarket chains that we fight for? They are "flabby" unionized grocery stores, per Ryan Sager. Flabby. Did I mention that Ryan Sager

Professor Bainbridge Argues Conservative Case Against Wal-Mart

I have been arguing the conservative case against big box stores since the day this blog began. The conservative case has nothing to do with union membership, and much to do with respect for small

"The Only Dream Will Be to Work at Wal-Mart"

Those who think that jobs, jobs, any jobs, are the greatest boon the city can give to its minority citizens, forget how important hope and dreams are to us all. Here is a quote from Jerome Robinson, a black music store owner in Greensboro, NC, where Wal-Mart is, as so often,

Will Big Box Stores Cause Insupportable Traffic Congestion in New York City?

One of BCBB's chief reasons for urging the people of New York City to hold a serious debate on the conditions we want to impose on the big box stores is the fact that big boxes usually demand the use of automobiles. New York is a transit-oriented city, but the big boxes are suburban, automobile-dependent stores. The big boxes cause substantial increases in traffic. Traffic is objectionable in itself, of course, but more important, it will quickly affect our urban way of life. More traffic means demands for more parking. More parking means more sprawl. More sprawl means less urban density. Less urban density means a decline in walkable neighborhood shopping streets. For the facts on how much traffic congestion the

"Please Stop Building Stores!" Cries Sophia Dembling

My fellow ASJA member Sophia Dembling published a first-rate cry of the heart against big box stores in the Dallas Morning News on June 18, "Texas is Sacrificing its Wide Open Spaces in the Name of 'Stuff.'" Sophia says that we are destroying our beautiful country for the sake of retail greed. "Stop building stores!" Read her piece here. Some prime quotes:

I understand that the health of our nation's ailing economy rests on the shoulders of consumers. As we slowly convalesce from the economic disaster that 9-11 wrought, as we hemorrhage money in Iraq, as the airlines gasp and wheeze, as outsourcing bleeds jobs, as national job growth limps

MCG: List of Arguments in Favor of Big Box Stores

Here is a list of the arguments developers and other proponents of big box stores make. I shall add to the list as new arguments pop up. I shall also be answering these arguments. Neither singly nor together do they persuade me that we should dismantle New York City's traditional urbanism.

Proponents of big boxes argue that:

1. Big boxes create jobs.

2. Big boxes bring competition to the retail marketplace.

3. Big boxes offer consumers choices.

4. Big boxes increase local tax receipts.

5. If people don't shop in big box stores here, they will go to other places to shop in big box stores, depriving us of economic activity and tax receipts.

6. Big box stores are convenient.

7. We cannot keep people from doing business in the city.

8. We don't want to tell people where they can and cannot shop.

9. Big boxes offer goods at lower prices.

10. Big boxes save consumers so much money that they have kept down inflation and increased economic activity in the country.

Ikea and Other Big Box Stores: Terence Blacker Analyzes the Ikea Riot in the Independent (UK)

On February 11, a gratifying essay about the Edmonton Ikea riot, "Whoever Said that the British Like Queueing?" by Terence Blacker, appeared in the Independent (UK).

Blacker delineates the cultural disintegration manifest in the recent riot at the opening of an Ikea store in Edmonton in North London. Six people were hospitalized, including one man who was stabbed. Looking at the bright side, he notes that the riot shatters a cultural sterotype and demonstrates that the British are not a bunch of slack-jawed sheep, patiently standing in line. "No longer will hacks, bores, bigots and lazy comedians be able to portray the English as dreary, anaemic, sheep-like people who actually enjoy standing, dead-eyed and slack-jawed, in a queue."

Blacker pins part of the blame for the Edmonton Ikea riot on the TV shows that make people believe that their lives can be changed by consumerism. The desires fed by TV-inspired consumerism, however, can never be satisfied.

In conclusion, Blacker says that "Riots that occur through need are about to be replaced by their opposite: riots of unsatisfied excess. It is no accident another Ikea riot has already taken place in a country with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, Saudi Arabia."

No link to this story, sorry. The Independent's policy is that you must pay to read it.

New York Times re Federated-May Merger and the Loss of Department Stores

The proposed merger between Federated Department Stores and the May Department Stores Company will bring store closings and lay-offs. The old department stores, however, made the city more lively, and they were democratic levelers-up. I remember as a child in Chicago being taken downtown to eat lunch by the Christmas tree in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field & Co, served by waitresses in black uniforms with starched white aprons. It was a delight and a great treat.

A nicely-balanced report in The New York Times acknowledges the effects of the discounters like Wal-Mart on the department stores, and the division of shopping today between discounters and boutiques. It suggests, however, that when we lose the white-gloved service of the old department stores, we lose the choice of products as well as the choice of stores to go to.

February 28, 2005

Selections from
More Luster Lost From Palaces of Retailing
By CONSTANCE L. HAYS

"It would be hard on the city to see a decline in the number of department stores, said Lizabeth Cohen, a history professor at Harvard University and author of 'A Consumers' Republic.' . . . .

"'The department store is a democratic tradition,' said Elizabeth Hawes, author of 'New York, New York: How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of the City.' 'It . . . brought people together and brought the city together and was responsible for making the city more lively.' . . .

"For decades, department store service was white glove, and simply stepping inside one could give the weary working soul a lift. Shopping online does not impart the same atmosphere, Ms. Hawes observed. . . .

"'I don't see how this could be good for consumers, in terms of the choices in products, in terms of the price structure of what consumers buy, and in terms of the range of different kinds of retail environments that we are able to go to,' she said. . . ."

Read the rest of the story here.

Ikea and Other Big Box Stores: Sunday Times of London on Big Boxes and Britain's High Streets

The Sunday Times - Business

February 27, 2005
Economic Outlook: David Smith: If Britain is doing so well, why doesn't it feel like it?

"Britain’s economic miracle might, one would have thought, have led to more obvious evidence of prosperity, the kind of easy confidence encountered in Germany or Japan in their most successful periods. . . .

"Instead, the years of success have not eradicated the country’s shabby feel, from the squalor of the majority of public buildings and the transport network, to the grimness of Britain’s high streets. Without wanting to be nostalgic for the 1980s, it was a decade in which British retailing was revitalised and raised its horizons. Now discount retailers dominate the scene and people fight over bargain sofas at Ikea. A country that has apparently never had it so good scrabbles around for cheap tat. Clothing and footwear prices have dropped 40% since 1996 and it shows. . . ."

Read the whole story here.