A commentary on the disappearance of America’s neighborhoods and a look into the “Local First” movement in Chicago as one way to combat it.

Walking out of the Galleria Mall outside St. Louis, MO, just leaving Anne Taylor and on my way to Best Buy, I had the uncanny feeling that I had just left the Galleria Mall in Cambridge, MA. When I look to one town center I increasingly I see the exact same stores there, as I would see 50 miles away. It appears that chain companies and corporations are overrunning America’s streets, pushing locally owned, independent stores out of business everywhere. But, what does the trend towards homogeneity mean for our country? What does it mean for our energy use and the sustainability of our way of life? And what can we do, if anything, to stop it?

On a drive from St. Louis to Chicago this winter (a part of a larger trip to various cities in the mid-west and northeast), I took note of the number of times we passed, not silos and farm fields, but townships and shopping centers where Home Depot is the local hardware store, Banana Republic the local boutique, and Olive Garden the local family restaurant. As the same ten corporations take over local stores, communities across the country will begin to all feel, look, smell, taste, and sound like every other; and eventually the entire US will be filled with one identical town after the next.

In seeing that a town center in New Jersey is basically identical another one in Missouri, I realized something important about our country: that convenience is winning over individuality; and as such our city centers are dangerously close to losing their uniqueness. Convenience is a strong selling point, as exploited by Wal-Mart, as is cost of products, and good marketing to consumers. These three together have allowed for the Wal-Marts to take over our streets; but in this take-over we have negated the value of our neighborhoods’ integrity as independent and unique.

Until very recently, big corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonalds did not integrate environmental stewardship into their company missions. Even today, when Green is the buzzword of the hour, these companies do not have an invested interested in making themselves environmentally sound across the board. One issue is that, while Green is in here, across the oceans there has been no shift in how these companies operate—which is to say, at the continued expense of human capacity and natural resources of developing countries.

While this all sounds quite bleak, there is hope: Chicago, that windy city, proved to be the exception to the rule. On my trip I felt that Chicago, above any other city, had a particular and noticeable pride in its neighborhoods. Chicago’s most hip areas are filled with stores that are locally owned that sell local products to local customers. But the fact that independent stores have survived there, where they have failed in other cities, is no coincidence. It is due, in large part, to the presence of an organization called Local First Chicago.

Local First Chicago is an organization founded in 2005 whose mission is to work with local shops to “educate the public on the importance of choosing locally owned, independent businesses.” Most importantly, LFC has made it their mission to spread the word through advertising, that local shopping is better for neighborhoods. On the windows and doors of nearly every store in these areas is the printed mission statement of LFC, outlining the ways that local shopping benefits a community.

Local shopping is good because it keeps the interesting areas of a town interesting by maintaining diversity; but there is more to buying locally than pure hipster-credit. LFC in fact lists the top ten reasons to buy locally (the full list is found here) —reasons ranging from keeping money in the neighborhood, to ensuring better service and putting tax dollars to good use. The Andersonville Study was conducted through LFC to test the effectiveness of buying locally versus at chain stores, and they found that 70% of money spent at a local store goes back to the community, versus 40% at a chain store. (The total findings can be found here.)

Effective resistance to the take-over of our cities by huge corporations means, not refusal entirely of all chain manufactured goods (as Alisa Smith might urge in her book The 100-Mile Diet); nor does it mean standing by as Starbucks runs Oren’s Daily Roast out of town. Rather a middle ground must be found where the integrity of a community is upheld, and awareness of shopping locally is broadcast. And this is where LFC particularly shines: in making local shopping an active choice, rather than just a side effect of an interesting part of town. In printing on store windows the mission statement of Local First, and in having each storefront display the LFC logo, the organization is taking pride in making known the importance of shopping locally. And in so doing they are taking a stance against the corporations that otherwise would buy them out.

Being an environmentalist who refuses plastic bags at every store I go to, who recycles compulsively, and who unplugs my coffee maker, the draw of a neighborhood is more than just the fact that local stores keep my neighborhoods unique. Rather, it is that buying locally is a necessity for maintaining the integrity of our cities, for ensuring that the ideals of private ownership and free markets continue in our democracy, and for guaranteeing that money and resources stay in the hands of the people who are directly involved in a community. Most importantly ensuring that local stores stay in business is crucial in the struggle for environmental sustainability because in shopping locally, resources, energy, and money are saved by reducing transportation fees and energy costs, as well as increasing community participation and keeping money within that community itself. In replacing the local coffee shop with a Starbucks we not only lose the integrity of an area, but also in so doing we take our money out of our supporting local neighbors, and we give it right to those corporations who already control our (now failing) economy.