Since Amazon has changed the way many Americans buy things, most of the big-box retailers have struggled. Fox Business recently reported that Walmart and its ilk are battling mightily to “fend off retail apocalypse.” But before the zombies come, the superstore giants want you to gas up and bravely drive over to your local strip center—at least once more, dear consumers—as legacy retailers try to create a new paradise in their old parking lots. Walmart executives announced late last year that they were “reimagining” the typical dull parking lots by building “town centers” that could “provide community space,” and “areas for the community to dwell.” And at least one new Walmart “experience” is now open for business in Temple, Texas.
The irony is thick, and not only built up under the numerous layers of asphalt that have paved tens of thousands of acres of formerly verdant pastures; the superstores killed off remaining family hardware stores and groceries on nearby Main Streets. Over the past few decades, Walmart’s easy, free parking and low prices kept many consumers buying there—at least until the e-commerce revolution of Amazon and its imitators challenged the old superstore model of cheap, easy suburban growth.
Now Walmart is trying desperately to think outside its big boxes, yet these attempts at “reimagining” can only lead to more decline for the old paradigm of giant retail. The stagnant model of suburban real-estate development may also be a harbinger of long-term American economic decline—unless government officials and policymakers reorient incentives and make smarter infrastructure choices. It isn’t Walmart alone that is struggling to adapt the old model, but Walmart’s prominent experiment at revitalizing its big boxes is worth following closely.
Today, as the superstores gesture toward creating more human-scaled places, Walmart appears to be finally catching on to New Urbanism, the movement that has promoted the return of traditional neighborhood planning for over a quarter century. Will Walmart, with all its resources and capital, be able to recreate all the benefits of a mixed-use Main Street in an old parking lot?
The renderings provided by architects suggest that existing Walmart parking lots might be rebuilt into retail and restaurant space alongside what in more urban settings are sometimes called “pocket parks,” small patches of grass and foliage that provide some relief from the asphalt. And there may be even more. Dog parks, food trucks, and European-style food halls all abound. (One proposal in the prosperous Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit, Missouri even imagines a grand piano atop an outdoor stage, as if a performer will belt out some show tunes or an operetta. So it’s not exactly Nordstrom, but they’re trying.) (...)
Still, for all of Walmart’s creative attempts at “reimagining,” which try to humanize suburban parking lots, they start to look a lot like typical shopping malls. Acres of parking remain, and huge arterial roads act as moats that prevent pedestrians from easily traveling beyond Walmart’s property. (...)
For decades, big-box stores were made possible by pouring billions into new suburban infrastructure, all of it subsidized by taxpayers. The good times of the 1980s and 1990s fueled the building of thousands more big-box stores, including the now-ubiquitous local Walmart. In the short term, jobs were created, and everyone was getting cheaper TVs and any number of other goods.
Of course there was never a free lunch, even at the stunningly cheap cafeterias of Ikea, those ultimate big boxes that outdo Walmart’s typical square footage with five football fields of space. Historians and economists may soon look back at these hubristic years, just prior to and after the new millennium, as the peak of the big-box sprawl experiment.
One landmark moment should not be forgotten from the annals of 1992, when President George H.W. Bush traveled on Air Force One to Arkansas to pay homage to ailing Walmart founder Sam Walton (and present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom). Increased trade liberalization had begun during the elder-Bush years, and then in 1993, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for which Walmart had intensely lobbied, hoping to open thousands of stores south of the border.
After NAFTA, the decline of domestic manufacturing only accelerated. At the same time, desperate local municipalities seeking big-box employers gladly provided “tax incentives.” These big breaks, of course ultimately funded by taxpayers, created new roads—including traffic signals, power, water, and policing. Decades later, the deferred maintenance is coming due, and who will foot the bill for all the infrastructure spent to prop up the big-box experiment?
In America’s wealthier metropolitan zip codes, Walmart can “reimagine” a new place, seeking consumers to sip five-dollar lattes and buy artisanal burgers. But in many less prosperous burghs, stagnant wages won’t support such reinventions or fuel economic growth. Hundreds of Walmarts first creatively destroyed local businesses, but the company later shuttered some of its under-performing superstores themselves—sometimes only a decade or two after they were built—leaving many towns that were already struggling even poorer.
by Lewis McCrary, The American Conservative | Read more:
Image:Nicholas Eckhart/Flickr
The irony is thick, and not only built up under the numerous layers of asphalt that have paved tens of thousands of acres of formerly verdant pastures; the superstores killed off remaining family hardware stores and groceries on nearby Main Streets. Over the past few decades, Walmart’s easy, free parking and low prices kept many consumers buying there—at least until the e-commerce revolution of Amazon and its imitators challenged the old superstore model of cheap, easy suburban growth.
Now Walmart is trying desperately to think outside its big boxes, yet these attempts at “reimagining” can only lead to more decline for the old paradigm of giant retail. The stagnant model of suburban real-estate development may also be a harbinger of long-term American economic decline—unless government officials and policymakers reorient incentives and make smarter infrastructure choices. It isn’t Walmart alone that is struggling to adapt the old model, but Walmart’s prominent experiment at revitalizing its big boxes is worth following closely.Today, as the superstores gesture toward creating more human-scaled places, Walmart appears to be finally catching on to New Urbanism, the movement that has promoted the return of traditional neighborhood planning for over a quarter century. Will Walmart, with all its resources and capital, be able to recreate all the benefits of a mixed-use Main Street in an old parking lot?
The renderings provided by architects suggest that existing Walmart parking lots might be rebuilt into retail and restaurant space alongside what in more urban settings are sometimes called “pocket parks,” small patches of grass and foliage that provide some relief from the asphalt. And there may be even more. Dog parks, food trucks, and European-style food halls all abound. (One proposal in the prosperous Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit, Missouri even imagines a grand piano atop an outdoor stage, as if a performer will belt out some show tunes or an operetta. So it’s not exactly Nordstrom, but they’re trying.) (...)
Still, for all of Walmart’s creative attempts at “reimagining,” which try to humanize suburban parking lots, they start to look a lot like typical shopping malls. Acres of parking remain, and huge arterial roads act as moats that prevent pedestrians from easily traveling beyond Walmart’s property. (...)
For decades, big-box stores were made possible by pouring billions into new suburban infrastructure, all of it subsidized by taxpayers. The good times of the 1980s and 1990s fueled the building of thousands more big-box stores, including the now-ubiquitous local Walmart. In the short term, jobs were created, and everyone was getting cheaper TVs and any number of other goods.
Of course there was never a free lunch, even at the stunningly cheap cafeterias of Ikea, those ultimate big boxes that outdo Walmart’s typical square footage with five football fields of space. Historians and economists may soon look back at these hubristic years, just prior to and after the new millennium, as the peak of the big-box sprawl experiment.
One landmark moment should not be forgotten from the annals of 1992, when President George H.W. Bush traveled on Air Force One to Arkansas to pay homage to ailing Walmart founder Sam Walton (and present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom). Increased trade liberalization had begun during the elder-Bush years, and then in 1993, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for which Walmart had intensely lobbied, hoping to open thousands of stores south of the border.
After NAFTA, the decline of domestic manufacturing only accelerated. At the same time, desperate local municipalities seeking big-box employers gladly provided “tax incentives.” These big breaks, of course ultimately funded by taxpayers, created new roads—including traffic signals, power, water, and policing. Decades later, the deferred maintenance is coming due, and who will foot the bill for all the infrastructure spent to prop up the big-box experiment?
In America’s wealthier metropolitan zip codes, Walmart can “reimagine” a new place, seeking consumers to sip five-dollar lattes and buy artisanal burgers. But in many less prosperous burghs, stagnant wages won’t support such reinventions or fuel economic growth. Hundreds of Walmarts first creatively destroyed local businesses, but the company later shuttered some of its under-performing superstores themselves—sometimes only a decade or two after they were built—leaving many towns that were already struggling even poorer.
by Lewis McCrary, The American Conservative | Read more:
Image:Nicholas Eckhart/Flickr
