The American West has always represented the hope of a fresh start
and
opportunity.
Hope
shone anew in the West last week when voters in Inglewood, Calif.,
told
Wal-Mart to take a hike.
After
the Inglewood City Council blocked the proposed development of
60
acres for a Wal-Mart Supercenter and the usual assortment of chain
eateries and
stores, the world's largest retailer fought back.
According
to a story in the New York Times, Wal-Mart collected more than
10,000 signatures for a ballot initiative to "essentially
exempt Wal-Mart from
all of Inglewood's planning, zoning and environmental regulations,
creating a
city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules."
Last
Tuesday, the voters said No to Wal-Mart by a margin of 3-2.
The
larger story from California is mixed. Voters in the San Diego
County
town of San Marcos turned down a proposed second Wal-Mart, but
voters in Contra
Costa County overwhelmingly repealed an ordinance limiting all
big-box
retailers.
With
any luck, Inglewood and San Marcos will be the trendsetters for
California and thus, if history is a guide, for the rest of the
nation.
National
chains are not entirely satanic. If you need to distribute a lot
of
stuff to a lot of people, quickly and efficiently, as you must
in a time of
rapid suburbanization, the chains are pretty useful. And a lot
of consumers have
embraced places like Wal-Mart for offering many different items
under one roof,
often at lower prices.
But
chains also impose costs on a community.
Chains
are bad for urban economies. The only purpose a national chain
has
for entering a local market is to suck money out of it. Local
independent
retailers and restaurateurs plow most of their profits back into
the community.
Giant anti-union chains such as Wal-Mart are bad for workers because
they
depress wages in both retailing and manufacturing.
Chains
are bad for American culture in general and for local and regional
cultures in particular.
Local
innovation in product development, local creativity in ideas and
the
arts, local variations in cuisine and tastes have a hard time
finding a place on
chain retailers' shelves and menus. Local building traditions,
crafts and design
seldom find a place in the chains' cookie-cutter physical structures.
But
the chains have become so dominant that they leave little oxygen
for
local retailers to breathe.
For
all these reasons, the best thing we San Antonians could do for
ourselves - for our economy, our culture, our quality of life,
our future -
would be to enact land-use policies to inhibit the spread of big-box
retailers,
fast-food franchises and other national chains.
It
isn't necessary or possible to prohibit them altogether, but we
can limit
their size and impose site-design standards that reduce their
harmful effects on
traffic congestion, the pedestrian environment and aesthetics.
We
can make it more costly for the chains to build here, and we can
narrow
the competitive advantage they have over the little guy.
Measures
of these kinds would not keep the national chains out. If they
really want to be here, they'll meet our standards, as many of
them already do
elsewhere.
With
such standards in place, however, we might have only eight Wal-Marts
instead of 10; and only 16 McDonalds locations instead of 20.
That
would be progress. Every national chain store that doesn't get
built is
a big opportunity space that locals can fill.
One
way to gauge the appeal, the economic health and the innovative
capacity
of a city or neighborhood is by the ratio of successful independent
retailers
and restaurants to big chains.
What's
that ratio in your part of town?
