Sunday, April 27, 2008

Convenience

Recently I went home and looked around at how many things had changed in the small amount of time I’d been away. A couple of years ago they put in a new strip mall that was supposed to be just like the Summit. In theory this sounded great and everyone anticipated its opening. Now, as both neighborhoods and generally all business has traveled to the side of town where this mall is located, businesses in the rest of town are slowly shutting down and relocating.

One side of town is completely empty with a mall and soon to be shopping center that are abandoned. In addition, the shops in another shopping center just down the way have now begun building in this amazing all in one center. It seems like it today’s fast, ever convenient society, people seem to forget the consequences of their buying actions. If you place every shop that you might need into one convenient location, how is the business in the rest of town supposed to function.

This idea of super convenience dominates so much of our society and its consequences are slowly being seen. Fast food, the ultimate in convenience, is just now being renounced as its health effects culminate. Town businesses are dying as Wal-marts pop up everywhere. It makes me wonder to what extent convenience will come to control and alter our lives as time goes on.

1 comment:

~*Hello Kitty*~ said...

I agree with you on this on, Chelsea! My hometown is pretty much going through this same "convenience" thing. All of the businesses used to be "downtown", but now they're all "on the highway". It used to be convenient for some people who lived near the downtown area to walk to certain businesses, but not anymore. They would definitely need a car to get to these businesses. Also, in the old "downtown" areas there used to be a lot of local businesses but now they are useless because we are getting a lot more franchized businesses.