What's wrong with chains? (II)

The Washington Post and the Washington City Paper have recently had many articles about the buying up of local businesses by corporations. I call this the "corporatization" of local businesses. Since the 1970s, for a variety of reasons, businesses have become increasingly concentrated in large corporations. This global consolidation has created very large corporations in finance (banks too big to fail), IT, retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, and even beer production. These large corporations seek to gain control of local markets, so they are investing in local businesses in a wide range of "global cities" like DC. What is wrong with this corporatization? Here I look at some of the recent newspaper articles and the concerns they voice:

• Corporatization can drive up prices and drive out independent businesses. As discussed in Steven Pearlstein's excellent Post article yesterday, corporations like Anheuser-Busch InBev buy up a wide-range of beer brands -- including Budweiser, Stella Artois, Boddington's, Michelob -- while its competitor SAB Miller Brands buys up another bunch of beer brands -- such as Miller, Blue Moon, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell -- and they create a kind of oligopoly. The market looks competitive because there are so many brands out there, but it is not, and thus these corporations can easily raise prices. These large corporations can also drive out independent brands, which cannot compete because, as Pearlstein discusses, the oligopolists benefit from economies of scale, control of distributors, and even control of space on shelves in liquor stores and chain retailers. As a result, we see global concentration and fake competition among brands, which Pearlstein describes as: "the market nirvana that corporate executives have dreamed about forever -- the appearance of competition without any real competition."
• Corporatization can reduce the quality of products and service. In his Post article on corporate wines, Dave McIntyre expresses the anxiety among many that corporatization will result in poorer quality wines, in the name of mass production and cost savings. In McIntyre's words, "Those of us who spend too much time thinking about and drinking wine still prefer the small-scale ideal of the winemaker toiling over the fermenting juice with purple-stained hands, wielding makeshift tools." He also gave examples where corporate ownership did not lower  quality.  
• Corporatization can create standardized businesses with a shopping mall type feel.  In her Washington City Paper article "Live and Let Dive: Does renovating a beloved bar mean quashing its charm?," Jenny Rogers also expresses this anxiety about losing dive bars, when they are cleaned up and their prices are jacked up. University of Maryland sociology professor George Ritzer has written about what he calls the "McDonaldization" of life: "the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world." These principles are efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control through nonhuman technology, which undermines other principles. One person commenting on the article even called the new Hawk and Dove one of the "McRestaurants," while another wrote, "it has NO soul. It's the suburban mall-ification of the Hill." 
•  Corporatization can remove the control and creativity from the workplace. This concern was voiced in an article about a new restaurant, which will go unnamed here because I have to find the article again. The owners of this restaurant almost gave up their plans because it was so difficult to rethink the restaurant's regional cuisine to fit investors' narrow perception of the preferences of the "creative classes." Speaking more about the general staff of restaurants, Ritzer writes, "The people who work in McDonaldized organizations are also controlled to a high degree, usually more blatantly and directly than customers. They are trained to do a limited number of things in precisely the way they are told to to do them."
•  The financial influence of corporations might outweigh other non-commercial values. In a Post article yesterday on whether governments will rename roads and overpasses after corporations that pay them, Ashley Halsey asked, "If you sat in traffic on the Burger King Capital Beltway, would that make you hungry for a Whopper?" Corporations could definitely outbid regular residents who wish to name various forms of infrastructure to highlight non-commercial values like democracy or community creativity.
• Corporations may not be concerned with local issues like trash or community problems. This concern is expressed most by residents, such as those living near Barracks Row on Capitol Hill. In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman wrote, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business -- to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits...The corporation is an instrument of the stockholders who own it." According to Friedman, it is wrong for corporations to care about anything beside shareholder value, though they must work within the "rules of the game."  We should thus be concerned about corporate interests in relation to the many different community interests.

Any other concerns? Corporations may take its profits out of the locality to a far-away headquarters and to their shareholders? Corporations may avoid risks and creativity, privileging proven profit makers or stability? Others?

P.S. See my previous post "What's wrong with chains?"

What wrong with chains?

I was walking with friends down Barracks Row, a retail district located on 8th St SE near Eastern Market Metro station. One said that he wished there was more than just restaurants on Barracks Row. Another agreed and said that the area had become "formulaic." There has been a good deal of discussion of these new restaurants and bars, which, in some bizarre way, look all the same. For example, see the Washington City Paper article on the new Hawk and Dove. In a previous post, I argued that the old Hawk and Dove was a cross-class institution. Such cross-class institutions are difficult to create because they must be affordable and open/comfortable to a broad range of people. What is lost when such cross-class and lower-revenue businesses close? How might we try to avoid commercial gentrification, which displaces lower-revenue businesses catering to a wide-range of income levels with higher-revenue businesses that have this surprising standardization?

As I discussed in my "Washington DC as Global City" post, places like Barracks Row seek to draw the "creative classes," who demand "unique," "authentic," "local" experiences. So, they would not desire a dinner at a McDonalds, Chili's, or other national-chain restaurants. On Barracks Row, there is a ban on new fast food restaurants, though national-chain fast-food restaurants have a customer base there, since local chains and local owners are not providing affordable food like Popeye's $3.49 chicken sandwich or Boli's $5 jumbo slice/drink. Contrast this with, for example, Matchbox's $12 chicken sandwich or Ted's Bulletin's $10.29 hamburger. The ban on new fast food restaurants on Barracks Row allows businesses to create a space oriented towards the higher-income creative class, which translates into higher rents, higher prices, and, for the city, more tax revenue. However, this does not mean that chains are gone. We shouldn't divide the world into either 1) national chains or 2) local, unique restaurants because the restaurant industry has figured out how to combine both of these, as we can see on and around Baracks Row:

• National and international chains, such as nearby Le Pain Quotidian, cater not to the customer base of Popeye's but to the higher-income creative classes. The stores are very attractive and are chains.
• Local chains on Barracks Row, like Matchbox pizza (with locations in Barracks Row, Chinatown, 14th Street, Rockville, Palm Springs, and soon Merrifield, VA), are growing into national chains. In line with the desires of the creative class, developers have had to create a new kind of shopping mall with unique stores, which have a proven track record. Early on, Bethesda Row brought in DC restaurants like Jaleo. In Merrifield, Matchbox is now joining other retailers we see in Ward 6 -- Cava, Dawn Price Baby, Le Pain Quotidian, Matchbox, Taylor Gourmet, and sweetgreen -- in the Mosaic District, which brands itself as "A curated mix of unique retail, restaurant and entertainment experiences" (upscale mall). Will the branch restaurants have to standardize to create the same experience as that in Ward 6? 
• New kinds of chains have appeared on Barracks Row. Around the world, a new business strategy is to create a restaurant group with some centralization (maybe centralized accounting, management, sourcing of supplies, training of staff, etc.) and major investors (maybe private equity, hedge funds, other forms of venture capital) organized around either a chef-owner or several chefs with some ownership stake. On Barracks Row, Ambar is part of Chef Richard Sandoval Restaurants with Masa 14 and other restaurants around the world, which also designs meals for American Airlines flights. Xavier Cervera has has considered selling his many DC restaurants, including Senart's and Cheasapeake Room on Barracks Row, to a Boston private equity firm. Does this lead to a certain amount of standardization?

My point here is not to criticize chains and label everything a chain. These restaurant groups can be very good for employees because chefs, waiters, and other staff can get training, move between restaurants and improve their work situations, and use these experiences for later career mobility. In addition, the corporate turn toward unique restaurants reflects a recognition that people have criticized overt commercialism and do not want to live amongst huge billboards and Golden Arches in their neighborhood.

We thus have a new commercialism that fuses chains, corporations, and a certain narrow interpretation of "authenticity." In the desire to compete globally and draw in the creative classes, does the city paradoxically create a new kind of homogeneous landscape? Are these landscapes of boutiques created because they are all catering to the same customers -- the creative classes -- and not to the broader population? The perception of restaurants as either national chains or local, unique restaurants also obscures the fact that the only affordable restaurants in many places are national fast-food chains. Can we have locally-owned affordable restaurants? Or will both national chains and upscale "chains" be the only businesses that can afford the constantly increasing rents?

P.S. See my next post "What wrong with chains? (II)"

Reporting from the SE Public Library

Today, I am working on the Arthur Capper Public Housing Oral History Project here at the Southeast Public Library. The library is exceeding pleasant, as usual. I am surprised by how bustling it is today. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in the New Orleans Public Library downtown, which had very few visitors. The Southeast Public Library is a great place to work, especially with the free wifi and the good cheer. Thanks to the wonderful librarians for making this such an inclusive space!

During my research on website design, I happened upon an excellent website "Wide Enough for Our Ambition: D.C.'s Segregated African-American Schools (1807-1954)." The website contains photos and history of these schools in each ward. Ward 6 hosted the first private school for African-American children! The website starts:

Beginning in 1804 with the establishment of public schools exclusively for white children, free African-Americans were taxed at the same rates as whites to subsidize schools where their own children were banned.  In response, the first private school for African-American children was established on Capitol Hill in 1807...Over fifty years later, when Congress mandated that D.C. finally open public schools for African-American children in 1862—also paid for my municipal taxes—those tax dollars were distributed unevenly.  For the rest of the segregated school system's history, African-American schools would be underfunded and overcrowded in comparison to white schools. And yet these schools became a great source of local pride and a model for the rest of the nation.  Washington, D.C. established the first high school in the country for African-American students in 1870.  In the dual system's heyday, from approximately 1890 to 1930, D.C.'s Negro schools were considered the best in the United States.

Thanks to all those who make schools and libraries such wonderful institutions!

Updating Blog Links

Today I am just updating some of the links in the right-hand column.

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Today, Eliot-Hine Radio will be reporting live from the inauguration! Yes, students from Ward 6's Eliot-Hine Middle School will broadcast the Inauguration and Inaugural Parade live from John A Wilson Building overlooking Pennsylvania Ave, NW. The program will be carried live online at the following link: http://t.co/dtuRWsFj

Curious about the students' radio program or their take on this historic day? If you, or your kids, want to ask questions of the student DJs, tweet using the following hashtag #EliotHineRadio. The students will carry the Swearing-In and President Obama's Inaugural Address as a live broadcast, to be followed by interviews and coverage of the Inaugural Parade. Thanks for tuning in and supporting Eliot-Hine Middle School.

Walking the NW Boundary of Ward 6

In 2012, Ward 6 expanded to the northwest to include part of Shaw. Yesterday, I walked half of this new northwest boundary of Ward 6. Here is the current Ward 6 map, which is very well done. The blue line was my walking path, while the peachy line is the rest of the NW boundary that I have yet to walk:

View NW Boundary of Ward 6 in a larger map

I started out from Union Station heading NW on Massachusetts Ave, walking past the 395 freeway and the NPR building. At 7th St, before I got to the Carnegie Library, I turned right and headed north. With the Convention Center on my left, I walked up 7th Street, past the McCollough Paradise Garden Apartments on my right, affordable housing created by United House of Prayer in the 1960s. I turned on M St and into the alley (8th Court) between the McCollough Terrace Apartments and the convention center. Straight ahead of me at the end of the alley was Center City Public Charter School and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. I turned left on N St in front of these buildings and took a right on 9th St, NW.

On 9th St, I passed a non-profit, Reverend Griffin S. Smith Center/ Efforts from Ex-Convicts. Reverend Smith had finished a 10-year sentence for armed robbery and began this non-profit in 1966. Scripture Cathedral Church with its stained glass entrance appeared at O Street. Across O St on 9th is the huge construction site of the City Market development, with a residential complex and restaurant being built at 9th St at P St. Across 9th St on P St, I saw people pouring out of Shiloh Baptist Church, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary (see its history here). My walk continued along P St by the fields of Seaton Elementary School to 11th St. There I became distracted by Logan Circle and left the rest of the walk to another day.

Who is to Blame?: Canal Park, History, and Community

Way back at the end of November, the Washington City Paper published "Frontin': The Capitol Riverfront wasn't always shiny, new, and friendly to figure skaters." The article is about the opening of Canal Park along 2nd St, SE, between I and M St, which includes a skating rink, a restaurant, public art, and park space. It is part of the larger Capitol Riverfront development. Almost immediately in the article, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is quoted as saying, "For decades, this whole part of the District of Columbia was a God-forsaken part of the city." Then, Mayor Gray states, "It was just housing after housing after housing where people were living in depressed conditions. Look at the renaissance that's taken place here." The renaissance includes not only Canal Park but also new restaurants, etc. Somehow, the article seems to blame the former residents, such as those who lived in Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg public housing, for somehow delaying or stopping this renaissance. Once they were moved, the renaissance could begin. Why?

As in many media articles and public political discussions, the article sets up a dichotomy of an either/or with nothing in between, when in fact there are always a lot in between, it might actually be a both/and, etc. The article presents the choice as being either 1) you are for the bad past of crime, public housing projects falling apart, no parks, no restaurants, and no other amenities or 2) you are for the new present and future shaped by Richard Florida's creative class. Richard Florida, a business professor at University of Toronto, has been enormously influential, advising cities how to compete in a global economy. In his writing, he argues that cities must attract the creative class, which is about 30% of the U.S. workforce, including scientists, engineers, professors, poets, novelists, artists, architects, editors, opinion-makers, as well as those working in knowledge-intensive-industries (high-tech, financial, legal, healthcare, business management). The creative class prefers:

• Not new and generic developments, not one size fits-all. Creativity, individuality, difference, meritocracy, tolerance, lifestyle options. 
• Authenticity/uniqueness, such as historic buildings or restaurants with a history (creatively invented or not).
• Plug-and-play communities, in which technology and standard amenities (maybe in a quirky or historically accurate package) are easily available: “where anyone can fit in quickly.” 
• Not trapped in the past (don't try old modernist planning ideas like stadiums or planning for traditional families).
• Edgy cities.
• Active recreation. 

The renaissance in Capitol Riverfront follows much of Florida's recommendations, even though they contradict each other (authenticity vs. plug-and-play), and created an area for the creative class.

While the area seeks historical authenticity, it also erases one past, the past of this "God-forsaken part of the city": "The skaters in Canal Park are simultaneously bringing back the area's distant past -- people are thought to have skated on the canal that ran through the area in the 19th century -- and helping it shake off its recent history." Since in the nineteenth century most amenities were racially segregated, a constructed white past shapes this park. The past to be demolished is the past of low-income African American residents of Ward 6. The former residents of the area made the area too "edgy" and thus had to be "shaken off." DC residents shaken off, like dust? If one sees the displacement of people this way, it is very easy to remove them.

According to the article, 114 households out of the original 707 households, 16%, from the former Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg public housing projects have moved back in. I would bet that the majority of those 114 moved into the senior building. When will the rest of the low-income units become available?: "The process was supposed to be completed at the end of 2013, but the recession froze up funding, and there's now no set date for completion."

In the article, only one former public housing resident was asked how she liked her new neighborhood: "I think it's all great." Of course, people would like new housing, new parks, and so on. In the comments printed the following week in the Washington City Paper, Angelina said that the Capitol Riverfront is "for a NEW CROWD!!!" and someone asked, "Angelina, are you saying that the OLD CROWD isn't interested in culture, outdoor recreation, and nicer things? And you speak for them? Because the article quotes a former resident that disagrees with you." Here, we have the restatement of the article's dichotomy: either you are for the good new or you are for the bad old. There are no other options.

For other options, we might look to the public housing residents themselves. They would likely have preferred redevelopment and letting them stay there to experience the benefits of the redeveloped area. In DC, for decades, public housing residents demanded repairs and renovation of their residences. For example, many families endured the winter without heat because the city did not repair the heating. What did Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton do to help this situation? Many elected officials chose not to invest in the Arthur Capper public housing project. Instead, they let it fall apart more and more, and demolished it over several years. So, while public housing residents might have loved a skating rink and a sit-down restaurant, they were displaced, and now we have a new form of urban renewal (see my previous post on this).

Jane Jacobs, another urban scholar (pictured on the left with urban-renewal-supporter Robert Moses) who has influenced so many here in DC and elsewhere, and many people in Ward 6, like the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, harshly criticized urban renewal. Jacobs called for gradual change in communities and gradual money, not what she called "cataclysmic money," invested in neighborhoods. She called for "unslumming," by integrating existing buildings and existing people with new buildings and people, not demolishing everything. A real mixed-income community. In contrast, the Capitol Riverfront was "master-planned from the beginning...built essentially from scratch." This destruction undermined the social capital of the former residents of the area. But community in itself is important for DC as a city. One of the former residents of Arthur Capper said:

[There was always something good happening at Arthur Capper, even though any community has a few problem people.] It was part of the District of Columbia…like a finger or an arm in the body of the District of Columbia…You just cannot destroy a community and expect the city to thrive and survive. You know, you might bring in a whole bunch of people and change things around here and there, but there’s a lot of people still who remember that community the way it is. Like my mother may have remembered her community back in the days when she used to live on 4th St, SW. You know what I mean, same same. The people. It’s the people and the good times.

His words suggest that another way was needed, moving away from the dichotomy suggested by the article of the bad past of low-income African Americans versus the good present of the creative class. The bad past was the creation of political leaders who chose not to invest in public housing and then blamed those living in public housing for the destroying the area.

So, why is the renaissance of Capitol Riverfront happening now? Did investors need to move out the public housing residents to obtain the investments in restaurants and buildings and to lure the creative class? Why?