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Is your life better or worse as a result of commercial suburban developments, such as big box retail stores?
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Results so far:
| Better | 52% | 110 votes | Total: 212 votes | |
| Worse | 48% | 102 votes |
Better
by Lenna Gonya
Created on: July 23, 2010 Last Updated: July 25, 2010
Decades ago, everyone shopped on America’s Main Streets. Friday and Saturday nights were, traditionally, “opening nights”, when stores stayed open until nine, or later, and people congregated on the streets to shop, eat, and visit.
Back in the days before the “big box” stores, specialty shops flourished. You navigated from shop to shop, buying clothes, shoes, jewelry, meat, and other goods at established stores that had been around for several generations. You knew the owners, the clerks, and the quality of the goods, most of which were made in the U.S. You knew what the prices were going to be, and in some cases, you were even able to negotiate a better deal.
When the first shopping malls came along, with their earliest version of the mega stores we have today, people were amazed that they could often purchase the same goods at much lower prices. Similar clothes, shoes and other items were available at discount savings, and the demise of the family owned, Main Street store began.
Regardless of how much we may lament the end of the small stores and the quality of their goods, we still would not want to give up the convenience, prices, and availability of the “big box” stores. Anytime you can go to one of these mega stores and get your groceries, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, clothes, tools, and TVs all in one stop, it is certainly a convenience. The fact that many of these stores are open 24/7 doesn’t hurt either. Years ago, you would have had to put that emergency plumbing project on hold until the next morning when the store opened.
Small stores were fairly doomed from the start, since the difference in the amount of their inventory, alone, dictated that they charge higher prices for similar goods. As years went by, these prices were understandably kept higher due to higher rent, utilities, and insurances. Stores and shops run by families, dwindled away when younger generations lost interest.
There is no turning back where the larger chain stores are concerned, and truthfully, most people wouldn’t want too. We have become spoiled by the ease in buying, and we have pretty much sold out to the idea that the all American hometown store is history.
While we would all like to go back to the time when fields, homes, and shops still stood where big stores, blacktop and neon signs now live, if we are honest, we have to admit that many of us simply couldn’t afford to shop locally and go back to paying the higher prices of specialized goods.
Learn more about this author, Lenna Gonya.
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Worse
by Nuala O'Neill
Created on: March 16, 2010
We all love a bargain – but at what cost? Here in the UK, like in the US, out of town shopping centres and warehouse shops have been mushrooming over the past 25 years. These stores are hugely popular and people drive for many miles to visit these outlets in the hopes of getting their hands on cheaper goods.
These out of town shops attract people who previously would have visited the centre of town and town centre shop keepers complain that the lack of footfall on the town centre pavements, sidewalks and shopping malls is affecting trade.
The suburban and out of town shopping outlets have a number of drawbacks over and above concerns about the quality of cheaper imported goods and the wages and conditions of those who manufacture them, sometimes in sweatshop conditions. These out of town outlets have environmental drawbacks. They cannot be accessed by public transport, it is always necessary to get in the car and drive to the stores and park up. These numerous car trips have environmental consequences.
Architecturally, these retail outlets are functional to say the very least. The large chains of out of town retailers appear to have one design for their buildings and when the retailer moves into an area it just builds the standard company store without giving any thought to the character of the area into which it is settling. Whilst being able to recognise a store by the colours on the signs or a logo is extremely important , virtually identical buildings in every town is starting to give a very bland and corporate look to out of town retail outlets. The edge of every town looks the same and makes no allowances for regional variations in types of buildings.
Consumer choice is also affected by the large out of town shops. If a shopper reads an advertisement for a bargain in a certain out of town store, gets into his or her car (often with children coming along for the ride), drives all the way there, fights with the traffic, and drives around the car park a couple of times before actually getting into the shop, the consumer is less likely to reject goods for inferior quality than he or she would if he or she was shopping in a town centre where the goods could be put back on the shelf and the shopper move off to another store in search of more satisfactory goods.
Finally on a human level, it is good to walk into a shop and nod hello to an assistant or have a member of staff ask if help is needed. These are social niceties that are disappearing fast in UK out of town shopping centres. In an out of town shopping outlet it is virtually impossible to find an assistant to help. If, by pure luck an assistant is found, the stores are so huge with such a range of goods it is likely that the assistant may not be able to help. Irritation and frustration quickly follow.
Out of town shopping centres are definitely not one of modern times’ better inventions. They are frenetic, cavernous, ugly places, which have very little that is positive to offer other than the possibility of a bargain – and whilst we all love a bargain, sometimes the cost in terms of the environment, consumer choice, human relations and the loss of shopper sanity is just too high.
Learn more about this author, Nuala O'Neill.
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