Wal-Mart: An economic cancer on our cities

[hue]

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/10/walmart_an_economic_cancer_on_our_cities/

In Asheville, N.C., a dense downtown generated jobs and tax revenue and restored the city's soul

Most of us agree that development that provides employment and tax revenue is good for cities. Some even argue that the need for jobs outweighs aesthetic, lifestyle, or climate concerns—in fact, this argument comes up any time Walmart proposes a new megastore near a small town. But a clear-eyed look at the spatial economics of land, jobs, and tax regimes should cause anyone to reject the anything-and-anywhere-goes development model. To explain, let me offer the story of an obsessive number cruncher who found his own urban laboratory quite by chance.

Joseph Minicozzi, a young architect raised in upstate New York, was on a cross-country motorcycle ride in 2001 when he got sidetracked in the Appalachian Mountains. He met a beautiful woman in a North Carolina roadside bar and was smitten by both that woman and the languid beauty of the Blue Ridge region. Now they share a bungalow with two dogs in the mountain town of Asheville...

Minicozzi has since found the same spatial conditions in cities all over the United States. Even low-rise, mixed-use buildings of two or three stories—the kind you see on an old-style, small-town main street—bring in ten times the revenue per acre as that of an average big-box development. What’s stunning is that, thanks to the relationship between energy and distance, large-footprint sprawl development patterns can actually cost cities more to service than they give back in taxes. The result? Growth that produces deficits that simply cannot be overcome with new growth revenue.

In Sarasota County, Florida, for example, Minicozzi found that it would take about three times as long for the county to recoup the land and infrastructure costs involved in developing housing in a sprawl pattern as compared with downtown. If all went well, the county’s return on investment for sprawl housing would still be barely 4 percent.

“Cities and counties have essentially been taking tax revenues from downtowns and using them to subsidize development and services in sprawl,” Minicozzi told me. “This is like a farmer going out and dumping all his fertilizer on the weeds rather than on the tomatoes.”

[libodem]

1. Yep

Just watched our little Ace Hardware store close. They are on the same road and I'm sure the cheaper prices undercut them right out of business.

[white_wolf]

2. I don't know if they'll be any better, but I think Amazon is going to be a problem for Wal-Mart

I don't think Wal-Mart will go out of business anytime soon, but I do think they'll be forced to downsize since Amazon can offer even cheaper prices. Wal-Mart probably thinks they are too big to fail, but Blockbuster thought the same thing and now look at them. I don't think Amazon will be any better for jobs though. In fact it might be worse since at least Wal-Mart employs people locally.

[clarice]

3. +1

[awoke_in_2003]

4. walmart will push...

for online sales tax.

[greymattermom]

5. but at Amazon

you don't pay for gas or your time, you get reviews of products, and you can get any brand you want. When walmart is more than a few miles away, i.e. in the sprawl, those things add up. I know someone who hates peppermint. Where do you think he buys his toothpaste? Not walmart.

[tabbycat31]

6. Good article

And I think that book is going to end up under the Christmas tree for my dad.