Here Comes a Big Box, There Goes the íHood
By Philip Langdon
The revolution now reshaping American retailing raises
issues on which the architectural profession should take a stand. At a recent Municipal
Art Society symposium in New York, a retail and management consultant made a disturbing
claim: that there can be ìno public policy justificationî for protecting small merchants
from being driven out of business by ìBig Boxî retailers. The consultant, John
Alschuler, of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, asserted that since many New
Yorkers get by on tightly limited budgets, the city owes them the cheapest retailing
that competitive enterprise is willing to provide; if existing retailers get crushed,
so be it. These are not idle words. Thousands of small stores across the country,
many of them in downtown and neighborhood commercial districts. have already closed
as warehouselike stores have opened on outlying highways, and the pace does not appear
to be slowing.
One reason to be concerned about Alschulerís argumentópresented as part of an exhibition
titled ìBeyond the Boxîóis the economics of the profession: superstores are not good
for the majority of local architects. The work of designing these giant-size, generally
low-budget buildings tends to be concentrated inside the large retail companies themselves
and in a small number of architectural firms that produce prototypes to be repeated
across the country. Most practitioners fare better in a retail economy made up predominantly
of small, local stores, whose construction, renovation, and expansion provide jobs
for architects within the community.
But that is not the only reason why architects should join the debate over retailing's
emerging shape. Architects are concerned about the appearance, the physical organization,
and the social well-being of communitiesóall of which can be undermined by superstores.
In New York, one person in the audience suggested there is no reason for government
to exercise more than the most routine control over the building and site design
of superstores, because customers will vote with their pocketbooks, and good design
will win out in head-to-head competition. If only it were so. In fact, customers
make many spending decisions strictly on price, jeopardizing the ability of enlightened
design to triumph in a laissez-faire environment.
Unless there is intelligent community oversight, the kind of design we're likely
to see more of is dull, elementary enclosures set behind acres of asphalt. Maybe
the person in the audience thought this could be construed as ìgood design.î But
surely architects, trained as they are to distinguish between mere expedience and
more worthwhile qualities in the environment, should insist on a higher standard.
Not all superstores, or their designs and locations, are bad. The Municipal Art Society
program pointed out that there are several different kinds of superstores, ranging
from general-merchandise retailers (like Wal-Mart) to single-category retailers (like
Staples and Office Max) to retailers who focus on groceries, augmented by other goods.
Certain superstores may fill a real need in parts of the Big Apple, many of whose
residents currently drive to the suburbs to do their major shopping. New York may
be able to accommodate some superstores with little or no loss to existing retailers.
But Big Boxes are likely to harm the business districts of many smaller places like
Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, New York, two old towns of great appeal that are currently
facing a developer's proposal to build a Wal-Mart along the highway between them.
The superstore proliferation is a significant problem at a time when, as Newark architect
Brian McGrath noted in a ìBeyond the Boxî presentation, it is estimated that half
of the 4.6 billion square feet of retail space in the U.S. is vacant
As a society, we have every right to tilt the odds to favor retail districts composed,
to the maximum extent feasible, of small stores and independent local merchants ó
the sort of merchants most likely to spend their entire lives in one community and
to invest energy in its social well-being. Public policy is justified in favoring
stores that make a community more distinctive and cohesive and ultimately more stable.
In the end, the public good cannot be measured solely by the tally at the checkout
counter.
Philip Langdon wrote this as senior editor at Progressive Architecture for its December 1995 issue. PA was bought and folded later that month by new owners. Reprinted by permission