When Wal-Mart sought to build a supercenter development the size of 17 football fields on 60 acres in Inglewood, Calif., voters rejected the move in April 2004 in part because of the massive environmental and land-use exemptions Wal-Mart demanded. Wal-Mart devastates community resources in other ways as well.
A delegation of activists from Inglewood went to Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., on April 5, 2005, and attempted to deliver a letter to company CEO Lee Scott. The letter calls for a legally binding community benefits agreement that will protect the rights of the Inglewood community and guarantee living wage jobs, affordable family health care, fair pension benefits, job training and advancement, freedom from retaliation and basic rights on the job.
- Giant “big-box” stores such as Wal-Mart often “destroy attempts to create pedestrian-oriented communities and a sense of place and pride in low-income neighborhoods by use of unattractive building architecture and site layouts featuring huge expanses of black-top parking lots,” according to an October 2003 city of Los Angeles report on supercenters.
- Wal-Mart supercenters often drive out neighborhood supermarkets and small businesses, creating urban blight and driving down property values.
- Big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart typically are at the edge of town, resulting in long commutes to buy groceries, adding to increased traffic and air pollution, according to the Sierra Club.
- When a Wal-Mart closes, the vacant property drains value from surrounding commercial and residential areas. According to the Feb. 20, 2002, The Dallas Morning News, Wal-Mart has vacated stores in hundreds of communities as it builds new supercenters and Sam’s Club membership warehouse stores. Few non-retail stores need the size of the space vacated by Wal-Mart, and real estate brokers say Wal-Mart will not sell or lease empty stores to what it considers competition.
Controlling sprawl generated by Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers may not only protect the environment but also create good jobs, according to a recent Good Jobs First study that looked at 155 metropolitan areas. The nonprofit group found that, over a 10-year period, construction activity in cities with managed-growth polices was worth $100,000 more per new resident than in those that did not try to manage growth.
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