“We drive up and down the gruesome, tragic suburban boulevards of commerce, and we’re overwhelmed at the fantastic, awesome, stupefying ugliness of absolutely everything in sight — the fry pits, the big-box stores … the lube joints, the carpet warehouses … the uproar of signs, the highway itself — clogged with cars — as though the whole thing had been designed by some diabolical force bent on making human beings miserable.”
James Howard Kuntsler “Home From Nowhere”, 1996
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In May of 2021, I pulled into the Dollar General parking lot in Sunset Beach, North Carolina. In that sun drenched beach town, during that pre-season North Carolina summertime, everything was looking up. COVID cases down trending, vaccines widely available, and Governor Roy Cooper had long since done away with a statewide mask mandate. Local businesses had quickly followed. The word “variant” did not yet exist in American popular culture. But approaching the Dollar General doors, I caught a familiar sight: a white 8½ by 11 inch sheet of printer paper with the clear message: “MASKS ARE REQUIRED FOR ALL CUSTOMERS. THANK YOU.” Corporatized, sleek, with rounded graphic edges; designed by someone with many years of experience of Adobe Illustrator. In short – a sign designed far, far away from Sunset Beach, relaying a policy made far, far away from Sunset Beach. I clicked my tongue and rolled my eyes. I put on my mask and walked inside the store.
Dollar General, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target. We like shopping at these places for obvious reasons. Convenience, reliability, familiarity, expedience. But like a brand-new car or an actively managed investment fund, enormous community problems hide behind their obvious benefits. Inside the Dollar General I felt a recurring, grating, irritating question resurface: ‘when,’ I wondered to myself, ‘will we get these big box stores out of here?’
Policymakers in small towns in America are about to enter an economic crossroads. In short, over three decades, automation, labor costs abroad, and technology have cost small town jobs. Making things worse, some evidence shows that some companies now benefit from incorporating in population centers instead of as it once was – heterogenous mixtures of new companies populating the country because their founders happened to live there. So, we have small towns that got smaller, where jobs dried up, and where resources have dwindled, and we’re not sure which firms can return. Just like mother nature creates trees in an abandoned field, capitalism too abhors a vacuum– so large corporations able to buoy rural brick and mortar stores like dollar general and the largest fast food chains opened up shop as locally owned businesses shuttered.
All of this, of course, has happened in the context of the largest corporations growing larger, with more and more borrowing power. In fact, even rare growing rural towns experienced the creep of large multinational corporations – look no further than Middletown, Delaware. I grew up in Middletown. Between 2000 and 2010, Middletown’s population began to explode from less than 5,000 to over 20,000 today. When other rural towns shrank, why did Middletown grow? Mostly because Middletown is just barely ahead of other town’s futures. We didn’t need rural broadband and flexible work in order to grow; we just needed our cars. You can feasibly commute to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Wilmington from Middletown. Land is cheap, farmers are selling, and in a world of “drive ‘til you qualify” mortgages, Middletown is an epicenter for a rural rebirth on the east coast. But almost all new businesses in Middletown aren’t mom and pop shops – these are big box chains arranged in hellish, disjointed parking lots.
For a long time, after what I had seen in Middletown, I thought that the hope of locally owned businesses thriving in rural towns had faded permanently because most people didn’t want to move to a place that looks like my hometown. But then the pandemic happened. People discovered that they don’t all want to live in New York, Wilmington Delaware, or Charlotte North Carolina – at least some want to live in Middletown, or somewhere much smaller. And when they inevitably move and rural broadband supports their modern work environments, rural towns everywhere will have to ask themselves: how do we want to manage our growth? Middletown is conducting a natural experiment on this topic right now, accidentally a few years ahead of everyone else. If other towns develop as Middletown is developing, small businesses and local economic control don’t stand a chance.
If we are interested in local businesses run locally, with our communities’ needs in mind, we need to take our own steps in our personal lives and our municipal governments to live that way every day. It’s much harder to undo a big box economy than to prevent it. The longer our communities wait to act, the more they cede control to predatory multinational companies.
First, the public who live in small towns should take steps to make sure that we prioritize small businesses in our town. We can vote with the almighty dollar. Where local businesses are available, we should spend there.
Second, the public should push for zoning or development board representation for small businesses – and then change the zoning code. Large, multinational corporations are very appealing to development organizations that are not small business minded. Ken Branner, mayor of Middletown, famously said that he “doesn’t mess around and doesn’t say no” when a company comes calling. If the town leadership rubber stamps all business proposals, the largest corporations will almost surely outcompete the smallest ones. Municipal leadership must take an active role in saying “no” to businesses that the leadership and the public perceive will only hurt the town in the long run.
Of course, the strongest argument against regulating multinational corporations showing up in small towns is simple: in rural America in 2023, any business is good business. But this is not the correct way to frame rural rebirth in the United States. Accepting large, dominating, multinational corporations today positions a small town poorly for the future. In Middletown, Amazon opened a “fulfillment center” in 2015. The warehouse promised steady jobs and a wave of prosperity for the town. The jobs are steady and they do pay, but based on discussion with friends and family, it is soul-sucking, disposable work. Don’t take my word for it: ask the Amazon Labor Union that defied expectations to unionize a massive factory in New York, fighting for better working conditions. Letting Amazon come to town in exchange for work is a Faustian bargain – and it assumes that someone more responsible will not show up instead. If Amazon wants to incorporate in your town, a better business will, too.
But forget the terrible jobs that big box outlets bring – they will squeeze out smaller companies when they come calling to your town. Look no further than Middletown, Delaware, where Lowes, Home Depot, and Wal Mart replaced the hardware store, a cherished local business at the center of the town’s main street, run by a fantastic local family since 1860.
Making things worse, large multinational corporations are not interested in the health and well-being of your town. Any urban planner, real estate expert, or public health expert will tell you: regardless of a community’s size, developers must be told how to develop – not asked. When towns and counties engage in land sales to the highest bidder, without strict regulation, you can be sure that your town’s health and safety won’t be at the top of the developer’s priority list. Where will the sidewalks be? Are all these fast-food joints healthy for people? Will development be restricted to adjacent lots, connected to an existing town center? Will parking be centralized? Will there be mixed use development, with residential spaces above or close to retail outlets? How will people with disabilities access these services? Will any of the new development be accessible for families who can’t afford a car?
Back in the Sunset Beach Dollar General, I seethed, powerless, through my mask. In the end this is the major problem with large multinationals in rural communities: messing with people’s lives without contact. The Dollar General didn’t care about covid epidemiology in Brunswick County. It just told me I have to wear a mask regardless. Wal Mart didn’t care about whether the parking lot is accessible to people walking from Middletown center. Built the store regardless. I wished that Sunset Beach had a different place for me to shop.
It might surprise you to know that I am a lifelong progressive Democrat. But it shouldn’t surprise you. Throw out your preconceived notions about who might agree on the rural growth we are about to experience in the United States. Anyone can agree that a local business – responsive to its customers, integrated into its community, providing corporate citizenship, governed locally, is better than a cold, dead, multinational outlet. Local legislative and executive branches need the public support, the policy tools, and the guts to regulate new development and advantage local businesses to make them viable. Zoning boards, municipal governments, county governments, and even some state governments should apply a heavy hand. And if they don’t? Well, have you considered running for something?
Guest Post – Dr. Ryan Koski-Vacirca