The Walmart Effect. According to new research, “Walmart makes the places it operates in poorer than they would be if it had never shown up at all. Sometimes consumer prices are an incomplete, even misleading, signal of economic well-being.”
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Comments 3
My father and I spent every summer taking a road trip along US36 through the late 80s/90s, following the old Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway. We would pass through the downtowns of every small town along the route. It was devastating to watch the same pattern play out over and over again:
Walmart moves in on the outside of town, downtown becomes decimated within a couple years, signs of notably increased poverty followed. What was once a series of thriving small town downtowns across northern Missouri and Kansas often became quiet, boarded up, and too often run down.
It was very clear to me that Walmart in particular (though some of the other big box stores likely contributed) radically altered small town America, perhaps even more than the loss of passenger rail and the bypassing of towns via Interstates.
I fear Amazon is doing the exact same on an even bigger scale.
I think there is a parallel story about highways and transportation that goes along with Wal-Marts. The highways transporting people around towns were already there to be taken advantage of by corporations who had the capital to lay down the big box buildings and fast food restaurants. There's no happenstance anymore with people driving through a town and stopping at a local diner or boutique shop - most people now need a purpose to drive into town. I think James Howard Kunstler hit this in The Geography of Nowhere but I don't have access to the book right now.
I can only speak anecdotally, but in northeast Wisconsin, cities are improving in making downtown areas attractive again in a manner that can coincide with the economic realities of Wal-Marts and Amazons. Sure, it'd be nice to do some essential shopping outside of those places, but you can spend an entire weekend day downtown doing things that can't be easily replicated by those entities.
I feel like we can probably replace "Walmart" with "capitalism," because if Walmart hadn't done it, K-Mart would have. Or Magic Mart, or Alco, or all the other competitors Walmart beat to the punch.
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