A landmark too far

The National Trust for Historic Preservation describes itself as “the leader of the vigorous preservation movement that is saving the best of the country’s past for the future.” Yesterday they declared the eleven most endangered historic places in the United States. The places range from the natural (Nine Mile Canyon) to the man-made (the Bethlehem steel plant) — and then there’s the entire state of Vermont. Here’s why:

With historic villages and downtowns, working farms, winding back roads, forest-wrapped lakes, spectacular mountain vistas and a strong sense of community, Vermont has a special magic that led National Geographic Traveler magazine to name the state one of “the World’s Greatest Destinations.” Yet in recent years, this small slice of America has come under tremendous pressure from the onslaught of big-box retail development. The seriousness of this threat led the National Trust to name the state to its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 1993. Back then, Vermont was the only state without a Wal-Mart. Today it has four – and it now faces an invasion of behemoth stores that could destroy much of what makes Vermont Vermont.

Yes, I can see how four Wal-Marts is clearly a sign of the apocalypse — no, actually I can’t. This is an extreme but telling example of the reactionary phenomenon that Virginia Postrel has documented in both The Future and Its Enemies and The The Substance of Style. As Postrel put it on p. 8 of The Future and Its Enemies:

The characteristic values of reactionaries are continuity, rootedness, and geographically defined community. They are generally anticosmopolitan, antitechnology, anticommercial, antispecialization, and antimobility.

I’m not averse to historical preservation in principle, but doesn’t it seem as though landmarking an entire state is an example of a landmark too far? This debate is really about the externalities created by the demand for large retail stores versus the evident economic benefits from such stores. The National Trust is basically claiming that the externalities are so costly that they threaten the very fabric of an entire state. Politically, magnifying the externalities of big box stores makes sense, but their web page on Vermont does not provide a scintilla of evidence that these costs actually exist. The grand irony, of course, is that a century from now — when Wal-Marts and other big box stores are threatened from whatever the new new thing in retail turns out to be — I have no doubt that the National Trust will start landmarking the big box stores and decrying our lost retail heritage. Who suffers from this kind of idiotic extremism? The Chicago Tribune story by Jon Margolis about this little absurdity suggests that the residents of Vermont might disagree with the National Trust’s weighing of costs and benefits:

Whether or not it is a tragedy, Vermont’s character has been changing anyway, and not mostly because of big-box stores. Some of those small towns started dying decades ago, before Sam Walton dreamed up his retail chain because the world no longer needs nearly as many dairy farmers and loggers as it did…. In fact, the designation was not imposed from Washington. It was proposed by a Vermonter, Paul Bruhn of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, a statewide organization that helps local residents trying to preserve the look and feel of their small towns and cities. On the other hand, there are thousands of Vermonters who want to be able to buy low-priced goods without making a long drive and who pressure their local officials not simply to accept a Wal-Mart, but to ask the company to come to town. Though no one has taken a dependable poll on the subject, the conventional wisdom is that this is the larger faction. It is certainly the louder faction. When the Ames department store chain went out of business a couple of years ago, hundreds of people in the rural Northeast Kingdom of the state wrote letters to the editors of their local newspapers decrying no access to inexpensive underwear. Their solution? Let’s get a Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, click here to read how large chains are trying to expand their urban markets while responding to local concerns in Chicago. UPDATE: Gerald Kanapathy and Kevin Brancato are having a fine debate about this decision over at Always Low Prices, a blog devoted exclusively to all sides of the Wal-Mart phenomenon.