Can We Take Community Wealth Back From Walmart and Kroger?

Can We Take Community Wealth Back From Walmart and Kroger?

Author: Strong Towns March 19, 2025 Duration: 48:57
In this Upzoned episode, Abby is joined by Strong Towns Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt to discuss the emergence of food deserts in the United States. In the 1980s, the U.S. government stopped enforcing price discrimination laws, letting large supermarkets use their size to leverage better prices from suppliers. This led to the closure of many small, independent groceries and helped create today's food deserts. Abby and Edward discuss the shift from grocery stores being neighborhood assets to regional destinations and how that extracts wealth from communities. Then they share bottom-up ways that everyday people can address these food shortages in their communities. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES “The Great Grocery Squeeze: How a federal policy change in the 1980s created the modern food desert” by Stacy Mitchell, The Atlantic (December 2024). Abby Newsham (X/Twitter). Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

Each week, Upzoned takes a single, pressing story from the world of urban development, municipal policy, and community economics and holds it up to the light. Hosts Abby Kinney and Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns, sometimes joined by a guest, don't just skim the headlines. They dig into the nuances of a specific zoning decision, a new infrastructure project, or a shifting demographic trend, asking what it reveals about how we actually build our cities, towns, and neighborhoods. The conversation is grounded in the practical, bottom-up philosophy of the Strong Towns movement, making complex topics accessible and immediately relevant. This isn't a broad news recap; it's a focused, thoughtful dissection for anyone curious about why their community looks and functions the way it does. You'll hear informed debate, critical analysis, and a persistent questioning of conventional wisdom, all aimed at understanding how we can create places that are financially resilient and genuinely enriching for the people who live in them. Tune in for a deeper, more substantive take on the stories that shape our shared spaces.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Upzoned
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