Groceries and power

SO WE LIVE in a world where groceries and malls are the new power centers. 

If the church and the municipios were the symbols and circuits of power for the colonial and feudal societies, groceries, strip malls and convenient stores are the cornerstones of the consumer-consumption based societies.  

 

While these groceries and retail shops may have been “business as usual” in the past, their influence has literally and virtually altered governance landscape and urban life in the Philippines, the city of Laoag and Ilocos Norte. Their impacts have shifted local leaders’ and governments’ priorities on urban planning, investment policies, and provisions on tax incentives among others.

The inner story has changed and us at least for now. 

The abrupt alteration of the Ilocano Heroes Hall from a one-stop-shop access point for public services and venue for community and public service events to a medium size wet market-food, liquor and dry goods store; and of course who would forget the transformation of the Laoag Central Elementary School to a hypermarket as preferred by the church and more illustrates the skulking persuasion of sell groceries to Ilocano governance and society.

This shifts reminds me of the urban disorder they called “I shop therefore I am syndrome.”

I heard that not a single public hearing or public consultation was organized to debate, discuss and explore the pros and cons of these conversions or a valid research or an in-depth study at least to determine the impacts of conversion. They are here for good and contracts I believed are 25? 50? 100 years probably?    

Will we see 20, 50 or more groceries and malls rising in the next ten years? Possibly but try to imagine an inner city, a city hall and a provincial capitol surrounded and adorned groceries. Isn’t that wonderful?  The image is somewhat like similar to Baguio, Edsa, Dagupan and Manila to me. Yahoo!

Hypermarkets are considered “category killers” by expert urban planners and the entry of these establishments within inner cities and plazas are considered unsustainable. These big box retailers and shops generate “urban sprawl” and arterial traffic in areas around store locations. We have seen these happen in some of the sick cities with the worst urban landscapes in the country.  

The impacts of these ubiquitous purveyors of salami, sausages, toothpaste and soap are many (social, economic, environment, cultural, political) and I am just warming up.

Let me deconstruct or expand the issue a little further.

If “groceries” and “malls” emerges as the Ilocos or let’s try to game it a bit as One Ilocos Norte’s emerging development narrative, questions such as these might be relevant to public policy and governance discourse: who are gaining, winning and losing at the economic, social and political levels in a grocery driven Ilocos Norte scenario? There are reports from here and abroad that grocery related investments are emerging sources of corruption and conflict of interest.

So, with that in mind, whose futures are privileged here? And of course, who are silenced?

Obviously that would be the local businesses, the local real property taxpayers, the sustainability and resiliency of the local economy, labor rights, local wealth and assets, etc.

It could also prolong the middle income trap this nation and this province have been experiencing for years. While official data tells us that we had some gains on poverty incidence, urban poverty, urban gentrification, decay and decline, unemployment and capital flight are the obvious implications of developments driven by grocery and mall driven types of investments. 

What about the constant pressure or lobbying these groceries and mall companies make to national and regional governments to keep the wages low and pay their employees below poverty line wages, avoid real property and other forms of business taxes in the guise of 25 years tax incentives?

The economic cost to output, productivity and lost wages not to mention the social, environment, infrastructure and health cost of these generic groceries are huge. 

Okay. Let us try to be a little bit pragmatic here.

Governments and communities can actually mitigate the negatives or perhaps transform the impacts of strip malls.

They could fund, in fact the malls are capable, community driven projects that supports social innovation for culture and the arts, prevent traffic and waste, green the urban landscape, organize forum and symposia that supports urban leadership and rejuvenation and help SMEs and coops as well access available markets, co-promotional branding etc.

The key here is to engage these malls and invest on impact investments initiatives. The key is to ensure that social and economic capital grows and flows to a level that everyone gets a share in a growing city and participate in the local-global market.  

But we need to keep our “supermarkets” and farmers market super! And give our full and unconditional support to get up and go vendor types of entrepreneurs as well. We can’t afford to have all the groceries and malls in the universe to establish their multiple sets of branches here.    

Today, malls are the graveyards of the US economy. 

Since 2008, hundreds of malls across the US have shut down and half of it are predicted to close within the next ten years. Sarah Kendzior, a mall and urban governance writer, reported that from 2000 to 2011, suburban poverty surged by 67 percent as gentrification forced city residents from their homes. Mid-tier malls that depended on middle-class shoppers faltered as the middle class shrank.

These malls located in marginal areas (secondary cities and municipalities here) have drained the local revenue base.

The emergence of digital money, the mainstreaming of online shopping or as what long time retail consultant Howard Davidowitz argued “This isn’t rocket science. What's going on is that customers don't have the [...] money".

The country, the city or this province might experience such an event sooner than later perhaps in thirty years? But that’s just my assumption. I hope I am wrong because if my foresight is correct then that would be tragic.

Now, what would our cities be like without them?

Our children would someday perhaps consider them the malls as Kendzior noted “nostalgic abstraction of the past” and they might say, looking at a pure concrete, “This is a memory of what they used to do. The mall was an important place in their lives”.