Instapundit is easily persuaded when he wants to be

Glenn says:

WITH WAL-MART SELLING ORGANIC FOOD and fair-trade coffee, what new reasons will the haters find for hating 'em? I'm sure they'll come up with some.

Comments

[Randy Paul]

Actually all of the old reasons will suffice.

Glenn gets more irrational with each passing day.

[Adam Villani]

Yeah, I read him for the sheer number of links he posts, but for someone who claims to be so independent, he's awfully reactionary.

[David Sucher]

Actually my bemusement is that he ignores Wal-Mart's spatial impact both at the macro-level of regional shopping patterns and at the site level of totally non-urban buildings, though that latter may be changing -- I have heard rumors of an openness to building "Main Street" Wal-Marts.

[Adam Villani]

Most of the criticism of Wal-Mart centers around how it crowds out local retailers, pays its employees poorly and fights unions, uses cheap offshore labor, etc. Its defenders say it provides a remarkable logistics model and lowers the cost of living. Little of the discussion in the popular spehere, pro or con, centers around its spatial tendencies. Indeed; the criticism of Wal-Mart holds regardless of how it builds its stores.

In downtown Long Beach, California, a new Wal-Mart was built a few years ago (to replace a failed traditional shopping mall) that is more integrated with the existing urban fabric, though its main entrance is still oriented away from the major streets. There is little setback from the sidewalk, parking is in structures buffered from the street with housing-over-retail, and it is adjacent to a light-rail station. They still don't pay their workers much.

[Brian Miller]

David: I am actually participating in an ongoing forum about the public health impacts of current planning paradigms. There is a real naivite about the very factor you bring up. Some people almost appear to belive that the public sector has "willed" the creation of unwalkable communities, whereas I believe that we are more "enablers"-and that the private sector has very much eagerly embraced the Wal Mart model across almost all economic sectors: few, very large storres that require a private automobile for access and that almost make impossible usuably walkable neighborhoods. Even if one were to live in a perfect New Urbanist Trumanville that followed all "the rules", one would still gas up the SUV for the trip to COSTCO or WalMart in the less strictly regulated suburb up the freeway. How can one "walk to the store" when the store is a 180,000 square foot supercenter that is the only real place to buy groceries in a city of 100,000 people? We lose a lot with these "efficiencies."

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