Professor Charles C. Bohl says that Europe must weigh harms as well as benefits when deciding whether to adopt American-style retail sprawl.
"The lesson from America begins and ends with a warning: Conventional suburban retail formats that constitute a major portion of sprawl in the United States represent a voracious virus that, once introduced into the European fabric, will rend it and eviscerate the small scale, high-service shopkeepers that have been a cornerstone of European social and cultural life for ages... Europeans need to look at the devastation, waste and placelessness of retail sprawl that has swept across the American landscape. ... While American consumers have enjoyed an extremely wide variety of goods at competitive prices, these benefits have come at a cost, which Europeans must now decide if they are willing to pay."
Thanks to Laurence Aurbach
FULL STORY: Shop And Awe: The Peril Of American-Style Commercial Development For Europe
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