Developing Local Economy

Local economies are extremely important to our society today, they determine the wealth of a population, be it continents, countries, states, or cities. The chapter in our book about economies gives us great detail in what is required to strengthen our economy. To strengthen a local economy, strong local network and trading systems must be developed. These support economic activity within and communities and contribute to the overall health and well-being (World Watch Institute, 2007).

It is shown that highly urbanized countries have higher incomes, more stable economies, stronger institutions, and are more ample to withstand a global economy. Urban areas are also engines of rural development, creating wealth which attracts investors and in turn enhances social development tying together human and technical resources. However the byproducts of urbanization are the downside to all their strengths, pollution being number one. More pollution comes from smaller more urbanized areas and degrades the quality of life making people very tired of it. Pollution is usually most visible in areas with high poverty. This is partly because the wealthy have the ability to move away from bad conditions more readily than people without much wealth. Poverty is seen in every major city and generally is abandoned by the major city and made into its own smaller city within. As well suburbs are created by the more wealthy to leave the polluted and poverty stricken areas.

What is dubbed the "Big Box Boom" has severely affected our economy today is the proliferation and rising dominance of international superstores (World Watch Institute, 2007), Namely Wal-Mart, who is said not only to be a bad employer, but also neighbor and corporate citizen. If Wal-Mart were a country it would be the 20th largest country in the world. The good news however, is that the mega company is going green, in 2004 they launched a long term sustainability project they are changing things like their packaging, real estate energy, raw materials, and electronics waste. Their lead in urging congress to impose a carbon cap on their own and everyone's business is helping change the public opinion of the company and putting them into more favorable light. The only problem is that companies such as Wal-Mart are still hurting the local economy, through economic leakage. They are simply sucking money from the local economy and displacing it all over the world, where they buy their products from, instead of promoting the local economy and pumping the money they make back in to it. This is what local small business owners do. They make local money in their store and then spend the money they make in their own local economy creating a stronger local economy and supporting the national economy in turn. This type of economy is what the U.S.A. is built off of and was its strongest in the 1950's around the time of World War II. Then as time went on after the war, convenience stores began to rise in popularity. These stores