The corner grocery used to be the corner stone of every neighborhood. Take it away and the neighborhood will fall apart. Here’s another sad story from Austria, one of millions in the age of supermarkets and cars. This particular story is told in German language here.
This image was shot back in 1994, a place where you easily could buy a bottle of milk or have a chat just around the corner. Photo: Herbert Ortner / Wikimedia Commons
The same place in 2010. Wal-Mart and companions have won yet another victory. Photo: Herbert Ortner / Wikimedia Commons
CORNER GROCERY (from A Pattern Language):
Problem
It has lately been assumed that people no longer want to walk to local stores. This assumption is mistaken.
Solution
Give every neighborhood at least one corner grocery, somewhere near its heart. Place these corner groceries every 200 to 800 yards, according to the density, so that each one serves about 1000 people. Place them on corners, where large numbers of people are going past. And combine them with houses, so that the people who run them can live over them or next to them.
But who will own the solution stores?
If the customers own the stores, they will prepay for the products bought in bulk and so receive those products at cost (at least for that minor level of vertical integration).
If many of these stores in the region buy their products together, and more aggressively, if they co-own farms and factories together, they will outcompete even MalWart in price or can use that difference to pay the workers better.