Walmart making another run at Chicago

The Chicago Tribune has an article that Walmart is making a renewed effort to open multiple stores in Chicago.

Let's be clear: Walmart never stopped its campaign to open stores in Chicago. The mega-corporation may have put its public efforts on the shelf, but it has been using the wealth it extracts from workers, communities and suppliers to buy 'good will' and/or silence while it gets ready for its next push. The reality is that Walmart has pretty much saturated all the non-urban markets in the country, and Wall Street insists on ever-expanding markets, so cities are the place they need to go.

An inconvenient truth that gets lost in their PR push is that opening a Walmart will actually REDUCE the number and quality of jobs and will suck wealth OUT of the area. As a matter of economics, those communities would, in fact, be better off with no 'big box' store.

Of course, the pursuit of amenities and "shopping opportunities" is different from economic development (contrary to the silly mantra of most CDCs), and adopting policies to support creation of community-friendly, socially useful retail is appropriate (there are far better ways to address so-called 'food deserts'). But the 'big box' model is a misguided way to go.