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Progress, or what passes for it
Feb. 5th, 2008 04:45 pmSo I went to a community meeting last night. SmartCentres has bought up some land with a high school on it, close to my house. Apparently they paid an exorbitant amount of money for it, and all indications point to them sticking a Wal-Mart on it.
Fun facts taken from SmartCentres website:
Because what we all need is a Wal-Mart within a 50-mile radius, parking all year round, our consumer needs met, and retailers who have a convenient access to our market.
What's there right now is a high school, with a football field. Sports teams play there. We walk through it when we want to get to the grocery store and don't want to be deafened by the traffic on the road. It's a bit of green space, one of the only bits left in that part of the neighbourhood.
But! The hell with that! What we really need is another big box store!
We need more pollution. Noise. Cars idling. Traffic jams. Accidents (the site is half a block away from one of the worst intersections in the city, BTW). More cut-through traffic in suburban streets. Roads, large and small, made so unpleasant people can't imagine wanting to walk/bike, even if they had the time/inclination to get up and turn off the TV to do so.
I know, people need cheaper toilet paper. And places to shop. It's progress and development and it's all about making good, cheap stuff available to people, and after all, isn't that what life is all about? Getting good, cheap stuff? Or rather, more good, cheap stuff?
Never mind that we have two big box grocery stores (and by "grocery" I mean clothing, houseware items, drug stores, a wine store, post office, and Bulk Barn included) across the street from the proposed Wal-Mart. Never mind that it's half a block from at least two miles of road devoted exclusively to large retail - banks, restaurants, Dairy Queen, several malls, Staples, Future Shop, Toys'R'Us, Blockbuster, Canadian Tire, I could go on but you get the point.
Clearly what we need, really need, is More Cheap Stuff. The hell with green space and walking, the hell with being outdoors instead of enclosed in cars, driving to and from places where we can Get More Stuff.
And a thneed's a fine something-that-all-people-need.
::sigh::
Fun facts taken from SmartCentres website:
- Number of Customers that are within a 50 mile radius of at least one SmartCentre: approximately 30 Million (almost the whole country)
- The number of days you can find a parking spot at a SmartCentre: 365 a year (that's all of them)
- With a team of developers that understand the Canadian retail environment, our vision for our shopping centres is based on what the Canadian consumer is looking for and how our tenants can best deliver it to them.
- This gives retailers convenient access to a market of over 30 million people that can be established in less than twelve months.
Because what we all need is a Wal-Mart within a 50-mile radius, parking all year round, our consumer needs met, and retailers who have a convenient access to our market.
What's there right now is a high school, with a football field. Sports teams play there. We walk through it when we want to get to the grocery store and don't want to be deafened by the traffic on the road. It's a bit of green space, one of the only bits left in that part of the neighbourhood.
But! The hell with that! What we really need is another big box store!
We need more pollution. Noise. Cars idling. Traffic jams. Accidents (the site is half a block away from one of the worst intersections in the city, BTW). More cut-through traffic in suburban streets. Roads, large and small, made so unpleasant people can't imagine wanting to walk/bike, even if they had the time/inclination to get up and turn off the TV to do so.
I know, people need cheaper toilet paper. And places to shop. It's progress and development and it's all about making good, cheap stuff available to people, and after all, isn't that what life is all about? Getting good, cheap stuff? Or rather, more good, cheap stuff?
Never mind that we have two big box grocery stores (and by "grocery" I mean clothing, houseware items, drug stores, a wine store, post office, and Bulk Barn included) across the street from the proposed Wal-Mart. Never mind that it's half a block from at least two miles of road devoted exclusively to large retail - banks, restaurants, Dairy Queen, several malls, Staples, Future Shop, Toys'R'Us, Blockbuster, Canadian Tire, I could go on but you get the point.
Clearly what we need, really need, is More Cheap Stuff. The hell with green space and walking, the hell with being outdoors instead of enclosed in cars, driving to and from places where we can Get More Stuff.
And a thneed's a fine something-that-all-people-need.
::sigh::
