Wal Mart Supercenters Banned in San Diego
A law banning large retail stores, intended to keep WalMart Supercenters out of the city, is approved by San Diego officials.
San Diego City Council passed a measure that "prohibits stores of more than 90,000 square feet that use 10 percent of space to sell groceries and other merchandise that is not subject to sales tax. It takes aim at Wal-Mart Supercenter stores, which average 185,000 square feet and sell groceries." Councilman Tony Young explained his vote in favor of the ban: "I have a vision for San Diego and that vision is about walkable, livable communities, not big, mega-structures that inhibit people's lives." San Diego used a Turlock, California, law as its model. Turlock, with a population of 70,000, successfully prohibited big-box stores over 100,000 square feet that devote at least 5 percent of their space to groceries.
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Too late to make a difference...
That's great! However, it's too late to save "America's Finest City" from consisting of some of the worst suburban sprawl in the nation. This is stark contrast to the "walkable, transit-oriented metropolis" which City Councilperson Tony Young, or for that matter even Peter Calthorpe or Teddy Cruz envision for the city.
Have any of you ever been to Mission Valley? It's a horendous example of how a business-minded, largely Republican power structure can literally take a once-bucolic agricultural valley and turn it into a nightmare of strip malls, big box stores, stadiums, parking garages, and perpetual traffic.
John Nolan, Donald Appleyard, and even Kevin Lynch all warned the city on numerous occasions of what could happen to it's precious natural setting, but no one listened.
No one listened to Gail Goldberg when she proposed the "City of Villages" for San Diego. The plan got such a reactionary, anti-high density backlash that she ultimately was forced to leave her position as Planning Director and take a position in Los Angeles. Now San Diego has Claremont Colleges/Harvard graduate conservative Bill Anderson of ERA fame to lead the crumbling planning department on a narrow, business-minded, ULI/real estate development approach to future growth in the city.
Finally, no one listened when activists and academics warned the city that building Petco Park downtown, building too many high rise luxury condos, and pushing many of its low income residents out of the city center, would result in one of the most segregated urban "suburban" downtown/residential/entertainment districts in the country.
However, as one travels along Interstate 8, one realizes that the big box ordinance which the San Diego City Council has just passed into law is "too little, too late".
Great for who?
It's great for the unions who got their quid pro quo from their contributions to the four council member's that voted for the ban...it's great for Costco (the wealthy's discounter of choice) who is magically exempt from ban (because of their unionized work force most likley). But is it really great for the City's low-income residents? They now continue to have to pay higher costs for food to support unions that actively shun their membership and they have to drive outside of city limits to get groceries at a Wal-Mart (which they will do, which will arguably cause more traffic and pollution than a well-desinged closer in Wal-Mart would cause). Also, keep in mind that it's not an anti-big box ban...it's an anti-Wal-Mart superstore ban that really only applies to Wal-Mart supercenters, which is a basically a big FU to middle and lower income consumers.
A better outcome could have been achieved by working with Wal-Mart to limit the undesireable effects of their stores while still letting them do business...but hey, when it comes to poor people and their needs, who cares?
I gotta love the all the "business-minded, largely Republican power structure can literally take a once-bucolic agricultural valley and turn it into a nightmare of strip malls, big box stores, stadiums, parking garages, and perpetual traffic" Oooo, those evil businessmen...none of that's ever happened in the largely Democratic power structure of the Bay Area...no strip malls, big box stores, stadiums or parking lots there...no sir.
Wait Until Gas Prices Go Up
As gas prices keep going up:
We will definitely see that it is no favor to low-income people to build grocery stores that they have to drive long distances to get to. Our auto-dependent urban design is already a huge economic burden to low-income people: they save some money shopping at Wal-Mart, but they spend much more supporting their cars, and they suffer if they cannot afford cars.
We may even see that it is not to late for San Diego. As a response to high gas prices and global warming, the state and the San Diego region may realize that we have to bulldoze those ugly big-box stores and parking lots and replace them with walkable neighborhoods.
Charles Siegel
They already have.
But in this case San Diego banned a store that might bring cheaper groceries closer to where many low-income people live...exactly what you're advocating for?
Walmart is not that cheap
It also seems a little convoluted allow these megastores to ruin cities simply because our working class is grossly underpaid (as are WalMart's sweatshop workers abroad). It's a vicious cycle. This country needs better, higher paying jobs, not cheaper goods.
Besides, I can find cheap groceries at Trader Joe's and my local food co-op. And I can feel good about buying recycled, organic, local and eco-friendly products there as well.
The big chains are really overrated in term of pricing. Ralphs is the most expensive grocery store in Califoria, and has terrible quality. Prices in the big mall chains are through the roof (e.g., Gap, J. Crew, Victoria's Secret) - NAFTA has increased CEO profits; it hasn't reduced prices.
Wal-Mart is really that cheap.
Trader Joe's customer profile is not low-income people...it panders to upper-middle class university degree holding types. Trader Joe's would not open up in low income neighborhoods as those type of folks don't shop at Trader Joe's. However, Wal-mart has a completely different customer profile, but most politcal decisons anywhere are made by Trader Joe's custmer types backed with union money....so no Wal-mart's (especially in the places that could use them most). Just read up on the town of Hercules, CA's rejection of Wal-mart, ostensibly for design incompatability reasons but mostly because the local elites didn't want any poor people sullying their newly renovated downtown (just check out the quotes in the SF Chronicle article).
As far as the comparing big chains to Wal-Mart...that's an illogical argument as the price of Gap clothes has nothing to do with Wal-Mart groceries...do an apples to apples comparison and Wal-Mart will beat Ralph's on price everytime (by a lot)...which is why middle and low-income folks like to buy groceries there, and why Ralphs/Safeway/Vons is getting killed in the marketplace (except for those places where it can convince the politcos to ban its competition, or places that don't have typical Wal-Mart customers).
As far as the working class needing jobs...you have to remember that Wal-mart employees are bascially the bottom of the barrel skills-wise and don't really have any other job prospects (other than fast food)...they need entry-level jobs to get a leg up in the skills set and then they move on to other places (avg. Wal-Mart entry level employees are only there six months). Once there for a while (if they stay), Wal-Mart's pay and benefits aren't really that bad...nearly all of their managers started out as entry-level retail employees. So these folks need places like Wal-Mart (10,000 people applied to work at the Oakland, CA Wal-Mart) to get some foot in the door to the job market or they'd be on welfare anyways...you're speaking from an outdated model of employment where everybody has one job for life.
City of Crooks
Of course I think it's a joke that the City of San Diego has banned Wal Mart. Of course I know that this will limit the shopping choices for low income residents. And of course I am aware of the pro-union lobbying which led to the quid pro quo on the part of the city council. San Diego just happens to have one the most corrupt municipal governments in the country, rivaling that of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed. Read Mike Davis' "City of Crooks" article in the San Diego Reader if you don't believe me.
However, the cronyesque, short-sightedness on the part of the San Diego City Council is indicative of a long history of horrific, "good old boy" planning decisions in the region. It has led to an utter reliance on the automobile in San Diego, with no other choices, no matter what the politicians or Peter Calthorpe try to conjure up for the city. Try taking the San Diego Trolley sometime. It happens to be one of the worst public transit systems in the nation, connecting to nowhere (far inferior to the expanding light/heavy rail and BRT system in Los Angeles).
At least people of all socioeconomic groups in the Bay Area use the BART, MUNI, Caltrain, VTA, ACE, and Capital Corridor. Those systems are actually designed to go places where people live and work. All the San Diego Trolley was originally built for was to shuttle drunken SDSU students back and forth from Tijuana.
And Teddy Cruz, elitist, Harvard-educated architect/savior of the San Diego under-class and champion of the "squatter-chic" avant-guard architectural typology from Tijuana, wants to ambitiously eliminate all the cookie cutter developments he so despises in North County and replace them with tin shacks and cardboard houses? Gimme a break!
And yes, I do think San Diego is a lost cause, just like other Republican/Sun Belt strongholds such as Orange County, the Inland Empire, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. SANDAG and Caltrans have already indicated that they will not be expanding the BRT/LRT system in San Diego anymore. All they will doing at this point is building more "Lexus Lanes" on I-15. Talk about a typical So Cal solution to a post-WWII, suburban epidemic.