What kind of shopping experience do you prefer?
This:
Or this?
The first is a newly renovated Wal-Mart SuperCenter in Tabb, VA. The second is the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, New York.
Big Box Reuse is a book by artist Julia Christensen that charts the adaptation of big box retail units vacated by Wal-Marts and Kmarts for an even bigger box "supercenter" down the road.
In different parts of the United States, empty units have been turned in to things like a courthouse, a library, a school, even a church.
In the book, Christensen quotes a mayor of Bardstown, Kentucky with a good summary of what's been called the industrialisation of shopping:
The new supercenter in town is geared for tunnel vision, tunnel shopping. You go in, get what you need. You are only distracted by the other hundred things in your line of site that you feel like you need to buy.
When are these supertankers going to be turned in to spaces and places appropriate to an age of personalised entertainment or what Richard Layard has called "a time for less selfish capitalism"?
When might superstores take on some of the personality of the awkward, bumpy humanity that is the interior of Park Slope?
Do we need to wait until a knobbly, dirty carrot becomes acceptable to buy?
Or with the rise of internet shopping, are these SuperCenters just spruced-up hulks - soon-to-rust relics of another age?
Images courtesy of Ryanrules and Heather Ring.
