Socially Local/ Geographically Local?

“I calculate that there’s a reductions of at least fifteen percent on their list prices compared to ours…This is what’s killing small business” (Zola 190)

That quote was written in a book first published in 1883. Robineau was furious about how even when he tried to buy big and help the small businesses fight Au Bonheur Des Dames he still could not do it. I was recently in Hawaii and I was floored to find that nearly every restaurant or store that I went to on the island of Oahu had listed somewhere in its advertising at least one other location, most of which were locales not even in the state of Hawaii. It seems as if every attempt I made at finding the local Hawaiian shop, market or eatery was a failed one. Even in a place known as the International Marketplace, in which several individual merchants can sell goods, I saw several iterations of the same shops in the form of several different kiosks in the same marketplace. This is still present today not only in Hawaii but in case studies of our own work. When we analyzed the Mall of America and the Golden Resources Mall we found cases in which some of the same stores were repeated over and over throughout the mall. When I first started noticing this occurance I was concerned about issues of locality being lost and about individuality of stores being jeopardized.

However, If you look closer you can see that what has occurred is a change of scale. Scale is not always just about physical size, but also about impact and growth. In 1883, the automobile did not even exist and wouldn’t for nearly another ten years. In 1883, the airplane was nearly 20 years from being birthed in Kitty Hawk, South Carolina. The point is that in 1883, the radius from which the average individual traveled from there home was very small and now we are a much more global society. Ancestry magazine, Volume 25, Number 6, in an article entitled, “A Moveable Feat” discusses the mobility of people from the past to today and their willingness to travel. The author, Beau Sharbrough writes that “In fine weather, a horse- or mule-drawn wagon could cover 30 miles a day.” To put this in perspective the bus route from the warehouse and back to college place six times is 30 miles. Less than three trips around Lake Onondaga is roughly 30 miles. Or better yet, a drive from the warehouse to Fayetteville Towne Center and back to the Warehouse is 20 miles.
So, if you want to go to Target today, it will take you only 10 to 15 minutes to get there and roughly the same amount of time to get back. That distance was nearly a day’s trip before automobiles existed. Would you have taken the same journey to Target if it took a day to get there? Or would you instead walk to Armory Square from the warehouse and attempt to find a similar item that you needed there?

My point is that when the scale of the way the world travels from location to location changes, it drastically changes the idea of the local store. Target is very much a local store if we defined local as the regional draw of individuals to a specific location or when it takes a reasonable amount of time to get to a location. In fact, it is reassuring to know that if I move to another town, I still have a “local” Target and I know what to expect and in some cases, I may already know where in the store the goods I want are located.

Because we live in a global society, the concept of local has changed. It needs to be redefined, or perhaps we need to stop thinking that “socially local” stores need to exist as “geographical local” stores. In the past local identity made stores recognizable to the citizens inhabiting the town in which the store was located. That local identity has now become a brand, or trademark, or a red and white bulleye. “Local” no longer exists as anything more than a simple geographical marker and it should no longer be confused with anything else.