Local Businesses

Local shopping streets are usually the face of a neighborhood. Local shopping streets some see as a relic of a past age that has been made obsolete with the advancement of technology and the growing popularity of online shopping. With the forces of gentrification in full swing and more and more ethnic communities being forced out due to gentrification many local shops have since followed suit and have closed down. While more and more local businesses close down, big chain stores have been expanding. While these big chain stores offer their customers more convenience and lower prices local customers feel a sense of lose with this change.

In Global Cities, Local Streets: Everyday Diversity from New York to Shanghai, the authors state “ When local shops change from one type to another, longtime residents and user experience a wrenching sense of loss. They have lost their “moral ownership” of the street, a sense of belonging that goes beyond legal property rights, and is based on a deep identification with culture of the space”. Local long time customers feel comfortable in their local shops because its all they know and when they see the local shops they care for so deeply being taken away and the changing neighborhood, they feel as though they are being pushed out of their own city. The city their parents and grandparents grew up in and they are being forced out and replaced.

I personally don’t feel that local businesses will not die out because they offer something that chain stores and online shopping don’t and that is human interaction. I believe with local businesses lagging far behind the chain store’s in terms of adapting and applying new technology they have lost a lot of business. However with the increasing technological proficiency of each new generation local businesses will adapt to the new technology and gain a lot of ground. Especially because they actually care about there customers and their customers care about them. While technology continues to advance and destroy the normal person-to-person interactions that permeated our society I believe local businesses become a bastion for human social interaction.