Quote:
Originally Posted by calvin-c
Where? AFAIK that would be illegal anywhere in the US. As stated, at least.
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There is no reason that it is illegal, every single city in the USA practices Zoning and Wal-mart is a large scale store which nearly always has special zoning requirements due to the massive impact on local business and ecology.
Recently a large wal-mart came to my area and there was a huge push from the community to fight the zoning for it which, because of its size, warranted a public hearing. Wal-mart conceded to the complaints by funding a whole bunch of small strip malls surrounding their location. A few local businesses have opened there though most of the lots are taken by national chains that are just small by nature (subway, panda express.)
Wal-mart's presence can be devastating, just as any similarly large, national entity can be. Wal-mart just has the problem that they don't bring any quality improvements with their "Low" price (which, in many cases aren't any lower than any other chain) so it's natural for people to react negatively to them.
That said, I can't think of one single small retail business that would compete with Wal-mart in my area besides a couple grocery chains and they have adapted by providing high quality fresh goods and wal-mart can't even dream of competing with it.
All-in-all, despite the concern, the wal-mart impact in my area has generally been acceptable. In fact, I would say it was worse 15 years ago when their dominance was first becoming evident in the area. Nobody knew what to do to compete, they came in with their dirty garbage stores and super-low prices and blew away the local competition. Then the stores went to crap for whatever reason, and all the neighborhood surrounding those particular stores lost property value at an extreme rate. Those areas are all now either high crime areas or are targets for urban renewal.
So there is precedent for wal-mart wrecking communities, but I think they have improved their results to some degree now.