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Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

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Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#151

Post by ep103 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #124
ep103 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ithaca being a college town definitely brings more money into the town. That definitely adds to the vibrancy. But I think my statement still stands independent of that fact :)

Most town centers did not have chains open in them, but the stores in them still died because people preferred shopping at big box stores 2 miles away. A small college town with a reputation of rich kids going to it is probably going to have an outlier amount of single people with extra money to throw around little shops. If they have families and start budgeting, they will be off to Costco and Walmart and Target to…

This is an understandable sentiment, but I do not think it applies in this case. In the case of Ithaca, most single young people live closer to the colleges, and drive or bus to the chain stores.

The actual town, I think, survives on the individual shop mentality because the physical layout of the town. The Ithaca town square is physically designed to be the physcial, social and cultural center of the town, which allows the shops there an advantage of being a center of the community, completely surrounded on all sides by walkable residential living. This gives them a competitive advantage, that lets them compete with the bigger box stores which require taking a bus or car a few minutes downtown to arrive at.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#152

Post by scoofy »

I think the problem with this thesis is that Walmart can combine the downtowns of many small towns into one Walmart in between them. It's actually only in the cities where you have enough concentration of wealth to kept niche departments alive.

In the cities the only reason why the big-box model works is exactly because it inverts the urban paradigm with a suburban one. Walmart's model would never work in an urban core exactly because the costs of property (and taxes) to build such on inefficient marketplace would be way too high, and could never compete with the cheap, edge-of-town model that they have built.

The irony, of course, is that much of the value of the suburban model is exactly in the form of subsidy capture. So while folks are happy to get discounts at Walmart, they will likely have to pay the difference 30 years later in taxes on an inefficient suburban wastewater system that must be developed to support this type of infrastructure.

Urbanism is more efficient, thus it should be cheaper, but it's the second, and third order effects that will eventually cause the rustbelt-ification of much of the United States. At least this is the thesis of books like Strong Towns that focus on the acceleration deterioration of finances and bankruptcies in many american municipalities.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#153

Post by ilyt »

audunw wrote: post #121
ilyt wrote: post #4

Author is delusional. A bunch of small stores close is nowhere near similar. I just want to go to one shop, get the stuff, and leave, not to go to 8 shops, pay 8 times, pack groceries 8 times and overall walk more edit: that is not to say opening big supermarkets is great, just that once they are there that's why people skip local stores and go to the big supermarket

Would you really be going to 8 shops every time though? Realistically I would go to a grocery store or supermarket and maybe one other store (like clothes or sports supplies, maybe a butcher or something if the town has that and I want something really special that week) I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as…

> I guess what Americans are missing from how smaller towns work in other countries is that they tend to be more dense, with more mixed zoning. Not as overfilled with way too big parking lots, way too wide “stroads”, and endless suburban sprawl. So the trip to town is shorter/faster, you go into town more often, for more different kinds of activities, and so you don’t have to buy everything all at once.

Well I'm not american and I lived in village and in small town. If I have supermarket in "range" I will go to supermarket, choice is bigger and prices are lower.

Sure, if I have store nearby and want to get an icecream or something, or forgot to buy something on weekly shopping trip I'd buy it there.

> Being in town - to me - is a part of living life. It’s where you’d have a third place, where you’d do various activities, meet people and discover new things.

...when going on grocery shopping ? And for some reason you're prevented from speaking to people in supermarket ?

> If you’ve felt the need to optimise your life to maximise your time at work and in your house.. that feels really sad to me.

I dunno from which arse you've got that conclusion. Do you have nothing more interesting to do in your life than going around shopping ?

Groceries are chore not a fucking adventure, regardless of shop size. And saving money means I can spend it on things I actually enjoy and places I actually want to go to.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#154

Post by frumper »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #126
gtowey wrote: post #77

This article is pure corporate propaganda. Walmart isn't good for small towns no matter how you look at it because they turn entire small town economies into a line item on a gigantic global multi national's ledger. And once done, there is no going back. They build a new store and then sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. They can do this because they have billions of dollars in reserve and are subsidized by o…

I'm fairly sure the author agrees with you. "Walmart is evil" is a core thesis of American intellectuals and can be taken a base assumption for any reader of a magazine such as the Discourse. So repeating that thesis doesn't add to the conversation. But given that base assumption, this is a discussion of a novel explanation one of the reasons why Walmart got successful, and a suggestion for how downtowns could replic…

I think you’ve reinvented the mall.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#155

Post by dragonwriter »

frumper wrote: post #154
bryanlarsen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure the author agrees with you. "Walmart is evil" is a core thesis of American intellectuals and can be taken a base assumption for any reader of a magazine such as the Discourse. So repeating that thesis doesn't add to the conversation. But given that base assumption, this is a discussion of a novel explanation one of the reasons why Walmart got successful, and a suggestion for how downtowns could replic…

I think you’ve reinvented the mall.

Seems the difference is a mall requires checkout at each “department”, Walmart only once. (Also can be cheaper because of economies of scale, though this can adversely effect convenience—you don’t have to man every department at all times a WalMart is open.)

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#156

Post by frumper »

dragonwriter wrote: post #155
frumper wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ve reinvented the mall.

Seems the difference is a mall requires checkout at each “department”, Walmart only once. (Also can be cheaper because of economies of scale, though this can adversely effect convenience—you don’t have to man every department at all times a WalMart is open.)

You've now re-invented the mall killer.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#157

Post by no_wizard »

RF_Enthusiast wrote: post #135

Focusing here on the "Walmart Didn’t Kill the Small Town" part of the story. I recently purchased some land in one of the rare US towns that does not have a Walmart (or any big box store). In fact, there are no big box stores within 100 miles of this town. It's a town with about 2,500 people, all within the town core, almost no population in the outlying areas. Not enough population to support a box store. The busine…

Cherish it, because that's a rare small town in the US. Usually the reason they don't have big box stores is because they're becoming economically desolate by that point where no economic engine can really help it along. I've heard of it referred to as "zombie towns".

The fact its that small, and thriving, and I hope has a reason COL, makes it a rare gem.

I'm curious too, do you have fiber internet out there? An interesting phenomenon we had in the midwest is that rural-ish areas got fiber to the home years faster than most major urban or suburban metros did because the cost to run the fiber was cheap and often the ISPs out there are co-ops

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#158

Post by giantrobot »

lapetitejort wrote: post #123
giantrobot wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's competition. There's variety. That does not follow. Small stores carry the same shit as big chain stores. Because of their smaller scale and more limited purchasing power those items are more expensive than a chain and they can only afford to carry high throughput items. The only way small stores can deal with long tail items is if they're super specialty and neat a large enough metro area to have enough sa…

> Small stores carry the same shit as big chain stores. Not always. Go to a dedicated board game store and you'll see such a wider variety than the branded Monopoly sets on sale at big box stores. Plus they usually have an area dedicated to actually playing games, something you'll never find at a chain. This community charm is paid for by the small store tax, but the benefits far outweigh the cost.

> Go to a dedicated board game store and you'll see such a wider variety than the branded Monopoly sets on sale at big box stores.

Stores like Target carry far more board games than just branded copies of Monopoly. Shit they sell Cards Against Humanity at Target. Barnes & Noble carries and even wider selection of board games and pen and paper role playing games. So big chains are definitely not limited to Monopoly.

While small game stores can carry a wider selection than big chains, most make their nut selling the bigger brand games or toys. There might be Black Swan stores able to specialize in Ticket to Ride or Carcasone expansions but that's not the common case.

I know the owners of quite a few small game stores. They are to a store struggling to keep the lights on because their costs are butting right up against their revenue. Charm is great and all but it doesn't pay the bills.

Again I'm not arguing against small shops but there's not much they offer above and beyond what can be found in big chains or online. The things they can offer, like a game play space, aren't easy or even possible to monetize.

Re: Walmart didn’t kill the small town, it is the small town

#159

Post by 1letterunixname »

gtowey wrote: post #77

This article is pure corporate propaganda. Walmart isn't good for small towns no matter how you look at it because they turn entire small town economies into a line item on a gigantic global multi national's ledger. And once done, there is no going back. They build a new store and then sell at a loss to bankrupt the competition. They can do this because they have billions of dollars in reserve and are subsidized by o…

Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center

Brought to you by the same folks who denied global warming for years like Cato to shill for corporate interests at the expense of our survival and that of all life.

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