Location, Location, and Starbucks
At the end of last month a news
report floated across the multiple levels of the news industry, “When a
Starbucks Moves Into a Neighborhood, Values Rise.” Fascinating to say the
least, scary to say the most. Simply put the further away from a Starbucks
coffee shop the lower your home’s value (Click Here).
Back in my urban planning days
designing retail centers and neighborhood strip malls for my developer clients,
the mantra was: “Get me a Starbucks!” Without a doubt the most important (and
busy) person in retail was and is the regional forward planner for Starbucks.
Having a Starbucks in your retail center was like a super sized magnet
attractive all manner of retailers and businesses. It could and would literally
make your deal. I wonder how many developers took their tentative lease
agreement to the bank; it was probably as good as a negotiable bond.
This also led to a number of books
on the effects of the appearance of coffee shops in the urban fabric. Called
“third places,” they have become social centers, meeting places, Craigslist
drops, offices, writer’s nooks, and places to safely escape. The other two
places were home and work.
So now Starbucks is helping to
drive the housing industry, which of course validates all that wonky urban
design theory flashed about fifteen years ago about needing to put mini-retail
centers in residential neighborhoods. Many tried and many failed due primarily
to the lack of decent business plans, cheap rents, and of course customers. I
guess all they really needed was a Starbucks.
(Full disclosure: I do own
Starbucks stock, I have visited a Starbucks in the last 24 hours, and I am
writing this with a cup of Keurig pod coffee, Starbucks ‘House Blend’ in a very
nice cup to my right).
Words, Words, Words
During the last few years so many new
words have been dropped on society one begins to wonder about their real
meaning. The current list includes (but not limited to): sustainability
(corollary ‘Green Growth’), organic, green (‘Green Chic’), carbon footprint
(and its corollaries ‘cookprint’ and Carbon Neutral), locavore, green roofs,
and of course Greenhouse Effect.
And to my way of thinking much of
this is environmental self aggrandizing marketing and baloney. The all-encompassing
term is sustainability. The simple practice of insuring what we humans do is
not terminal for us and/or the planet. All the other terms seems to graduate
from this basic term, a term that will
have a hundred definitions if you ask a hundred people. A lack of definition
allows for the mongrelization of the word and complete loss of meaning, and
that is where we are now with all these terms. One can grow quite paranoid and
itchy if they try to live up to the requirements of being a locavore (eating
food produced locally – of course determined by someone else), and worrying
about their carbon footprint while driving to a Whole Foods in a Prius imported
from Japan. But they can be comforted knowing that the plastic in the Prius is:
In constructing
the Prius, Toyota used a new range of plant-derived ecological bioplastics, made out of
cellulose derived from wood or grass instead of petroleum. The two principal
crops used are kenaf
and ramie. Kenaf is a member
of the hibiscus family, a
relative to cotton and okra; ramie, commonly known as China grass, is a member
of the nettle family
and one of the strongest natural fibres, with a density and absorbency
comparable to flax. Toyota says this is a particularly timely breakthrough for
plant-based eco-plastics because 2009 is the United Nations’ International Year
of Natural Fibres, which spotlights kenaf and ramie among others. (Wikipedia)
Now doesn’t that just make you all
warm and fuzzy? And how is this sustainable when the products are shipped
thousands of miles to the end user, who still puts gasoline in the damn thing.
As with most elements in this social/political discussion it is about
appearances - not reality. There is a term used by the environmental industry
(make no mistake it is an industry) that defines those using these buzzwords
for their own evil capitalistic ends as “greenwashing.” One can quite easily
use the term define the federal grant needy environmental movement as
greenwashed itself.
And by the way most of the fuel (coffee
and tea) that runs modern civilization comes from Brazil, Vietnam (2nd
largest grower), Columbia and Central America, and Indonesia. Now how sustainable
is that?
One more bit of silliness. It was
reported that some environmentalists were concerned that Boston would willfully
pollute the harbor and Charles River by dumping its snow directly into the
surrounding ocean. Maybe it can barged to California where we need it and besides what’s
going to happen when it melts anyway. Just saying.
Stay tuned . . . . . . . .
