Throughout the past years there has been an enormous and ongoing conflict against the opening of "big box" superstores which are famous across America. "Big box" is the new term used to describe the massive rectangular one-floor building retail stores occupying between 90,000 and 200,000 square feet with an enormous parking lot that surrounds it. They are designed to accommodate a large number of products as well as a form of billboard that affectively attract customers. These stores are strangely loved and hated by the American citizens. Many absolutely love them because they provide individuals with good quality goods at low prices, efficient and convenient service, and it is often said that as these stores not only create many job opportunities to the suburbs, but they also greatly increase local tax revenues. "All customers appreciate good service, low pricing, and great selection," suggest Walt-Mart (Beaumont). Although it seems like the consequences of the presence of these stores are all positive, one must analyze closely the long run effects in order to realize that they may cause permanent damage to the communities. There are certainly many hidden costs brought by these big box stores in which "do not appear on the price tags of the products they sell: traffic congestion; loss of trees, open space and farmland; displaced small businesses; air and water pollution; dying downtowns with vacant buildings; abandoned shopping centers; a degraded sense of community; and sprawl." Therefore it is necessary to study the opportunity cost of building these stores in the suburban areas to decide if they are actually higher, making it a better choice to avoid them at least within a certain distance from residential spaces (Codey).
Are "Big Box" really Convenient?
Those who fight to keep big box stores argue that they are very convenient. They suggest that consumers may quickly do their shopping making only one stop where they can get much of what they need. It is true they can do the shopping all at one place, but in return they must be in traffic for much longer on a daily basis. The existence of these superstores lead to much congestion into communities; making those who live near by face traffic throughout all their regular activities. "Sometimes you come out of the lot and you have to wait two or three cycles to get through the light at Nimitz Highway," said Jonah Maehara, a sales representative for Koha Oriental Foods, "And they are very long cycles" (Leidemann).
Now, a normal sized town contains fast-food joints, supermarkets, malls, and superstores, but a small town lacks that appeal. The small-town could be the most beautiful landscape known to man, but lack the necessary luxuries in life that a typical American would benefit from. Carr and Kefalas make this statement that emphasizes the town’s lack of appeal, “Indeed the most conspicuous aspects of the towns landscape may be the very things that are missing; malls, subdivisions, traffic and young people” (26). The authors clearly state that they realize that towns, such as the Heartland, are hurting because of the towns’ lack of modernization. For all intents and purposes, the town’s lack of being visually pleasing is driving away probable citizens, not only the native youth, and possible future employee’s away from a possible internship with the town. The citizens with a practice or business hurt from the towns inability to grow up and change along with the rest of the world, yet the town doesn’t realize what bringing in other businesses could potentially do for their small town. Creating more businesses such as malls, superstores and supermarkets would not only drive business up the roof, but it’ll also bring in revenue and draw the
Over the past 20 years, the nature of the American retailing market has changed dramatically, going from Mom and Pop's boutiques to mega retail stores like Wal-Mart. Especially in the last decade, Sam Walton's discount stores have proliferated in almost every city across the United States and Canada. But the opinions about the effects of Wal-Mart in small towns divide the rural population in two groups. Through economic, cultural and social arguments, the anti-Wal-Mart activists and the advocates defend their point of view about the expansion of the store in small communities.
Hansen, Brian. "Big-Box Stores." Are They Good For America? 14 (2004). 14 Mar 2005 <www.libraries.psu.edu/cqresearcher>.
With the rapid development of the city and tremendous progress of technology in America, gentrification becomes a universal phenomenon in every city, especially in Englewood―the south side of Chicago. As capital begins to flow into the Englewood community, many aspects of daily life are changed for better. The tremendous change brings not only the renovated facilities but arrives with the new retail and service business. Plenty of citizens who live in the Englewood community were benefiting from the gentrification. They also said that gentrification is a commendable change in Englewood to renew and develop. Thus, gentrification is beneficial to local residents because it arrives with the new retail and service business, increases employment opportunities and transform a more beautiful community.
Though in another area there would have to be a specific police unit to deal with these new stores. The insurance rate would also be astronomically high due to break-ins and the cost of the merchandise ...
“The Deeper Problems We Miss When We Attack ‘Gentrification’”exhibit their opinion on the positives of gentrification and the potential of “revitalization” in low-income urban communities. Badger argues that gentrification brings nothing more than further opportunities for urban communities while integrating citizens of different social classes.Furthermore , she continues to question if gentrification is in fact the monster that brings the prior expressions against gentrification where she says “If poor neighborhoods have historically suffered from dire disinvestment, how can the remedy to that evil — outside money finally flowing in — be the problem, too?”(Badger) Stating that the funds generated from sources external that are brought into these communities can’t be problematic. This concept is further elaborated in the article “Does Gentrification Harm the Poor” where Vigdoor list the potential positive enhancements gentrification can have on an urban area in America ,stating that gentrification can
Notwithstanding, there are various positive characteristics of outer ring suburbs, such as cheaper housing, bigger housing, lower taxes, ample parking, and it is a lot more safer, but even then, I would choose to live in an inner ring suburb. Moreover, another reason to why I would choose to live in a neighborhood in an inner ring suburb, has to do with the prevention of the negative aspects of gentrification. Although gentrification has promoted the overturn of poor neighborhood, increasing property values, the middle class returning, and preventing urban sprawl, the negative effects it has on individuals that have lived there for many years is devastating. Unfortunately, inner city residents have to endure the prices of their property taxes going up, causing them to feel uncomfortable, specifically financially. In addition, the old residents are forced out by the young, middle class, graduate students that are looking for cheap housing. Gentrification also includes the deterioration of old businesses that are overtaken by new businesses, such as
Economic forces have driven grocery stores out of many cities in the past few years, either only leaving only a few, and in some cases none. Many of these people leaving in these rural urban areas do not own cars and b...
Gentrification does not follow traditional urban growth theory, which predicts ?the decline of inner city areas as monied classes move to the metropolitan fringe.? The traditional economic model of real estate says that wealthy people can choose their housing from the total city market (Schwirian 96). Once these people decide to live in the suburbs, the lower social classes move into the old homes of the upper class, essentially handing housing down the socioeconomic ladder. Gentrification is actually a reversal of this process. For a variety of reasons, many inner city areas are becoming more attractive to the wealthy, and they are selecting their housing in those areas (Schwirian 96). The problem is that now when the wealthy take over poor homes and renovate them, the poor cannot afford the housing that the wealthy have abandoned. Many researchers have argued whether gentrification has truly created problems in cities. I will analyze the arguments for and against gentrification by exploring the subject from both sides.
Trader Joe’s also followed the statement into the cost leadership strategy that they do not set up a large shopping center area, instead of a place less than 10000 square feet which carry less items than normal market. It shows that, people would rather like to shopping in the area with less items because it can save their time of finding the products and consideration of buying products.
Goss argues that developers and designers of the built environment, specifically shopping centers and malls, use the power of place and understanding the structural layout of the space to boost consumption of the retail profits. Shopping centers are separated from the downtown area of shopping, either by distance and/or design. These establishments emerge for many to be the new heart and location for public and social life. In his article The "Magic of the Mall": An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment, Goss also argues that the regulation of the spaces within the mall creates an atmosphere of "community" rather than one that is "public". This article’s main argument is that developers manufacture an illusion of doing more than just shopping when designing malls and shopping centers.
Busy people with time constraints in shopping will prefer limited choices because too many choices will take too much time to choose a product.
The freedom to choose and globalization helped in the establishment of modern super markets. A standard supermarket displays more than 30,000 items (Cross, 2000:55). Assu...
Most Americans live in the 324 metropolitan areas of the United States. Even for the 50% of the population who live in the suburbs, problems of the central cities are increasingly common, and some pockets of urban decay have moved outward (Leviton, L. C., Snell, E., & McGinnis, M., 2000 p. 363).
All choices made by Seven-Eleven are structured to lower its transportation and receiving costs. For example, its area-dominance strategy of opening at least 50 to 60 stores in an area helps with marketing but also lowers the cost of replenishment. All manufacturing facilities are centralized to get the maximum benefit of capacity aggregation and also lower the inbound transportation cost from the manufacturer to the distribution center (DC). Seven-Eleven also requires all suppliers to deliver to the DC where products are sorted by temperature. This reduces the outbound transportation cost because of aggregation of deliveries across multiple suppliers. It also lowers the receiving cost. The information infrastructure is set up to allow store managers to place orders based on analysis of consumption data. The information infrastructure also facilitates the sorting of an order at the DC and receiving of the order at the store. The key point to emphasize here is that most decisions by Seven-Eleven are structured to aggregate transportation and receiving to make both cheaper.