Scary animated map of the Growth of Walmart.

[onehandle]

http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

[Kievan Rus]

1. It's like watching a virus spread

[Warpy]

3. I thought of a bacterial infection

but yeah, it looks just like that, out of control and eating up everything in its path.

[Quantess]

2. Worse than kudzu.

[chollybocker]

4. Mom and Pop made me K&R your post.

:)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. It looks like a cancer.

:scared:

[walldude]

6. I wonder...

what will make them stop.. there are at least 5 Wal-Mart's within 5 miles of my house.

[tech9413]

8. You might notice that they don't infest low population areas as fast

I'd like to see a graphic that compares small business closures to Wal-Mart locations.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

25. Well, it has to do with their approach.

They tend to operate on a one-size-fits-all approach with respect to their stores. (Well, two sizes if you count the super centers.) So you basically need to have a large enough customer base to support the store. I'd hazard a guess that their large city suburban locations are probably their most profitable.

[Luminous Animal]

9. In two years, 3 of them will be closed.

The 2 left will vie to suck tax concessions out of the communities "begging" them to stay there.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

7. I can't decide which is the greater evil, them or Monsanto.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. Wait til one buys the other and you won't have to decide -nt

[NeedleCast]

17. Haha, True

This reminds me of the 90 (80s?) action movie Demolition Man...when all restuarants are Taco Bell.

[TeeYiYi]

10. Bizarre.

I had ethereal music playing in the background while I was watching. It was mesmerizing in a creepy way.

The number of stores added in 2009/2010 was surprising considering the state of the economy. Evidence that the recession is disproportionately affecting the poor and middle classes while the banks and large corporations continue to flourish...?

TYY

[Gaedel]

12. You could do a similar graph on any big box store

Woolco, WT Grant, K-mart, Caldor, JM Fields, Arlens, Ames, Zayre

All of them would have blossomed out of their point of origin and spread across the nation (or a region). Many of them like Woolco would suddenly be snuffed out.

I would guess a BJs, Costco, Barnes and Noble, Old Navy, Home Depot, Lowes, Office Depot, or Staples graphic would be similar.

Unlike the others, Walmart started out rural and then grew in to the big cities.

[lonestarnot]

13. What are you trying to say? Yes. You could do a similar graph on any big box store.

Is that the point?

[onehandle]

14. This is different. Walmart is massively bigger and sells what all of those chains do and more.

Walmart ain't going away. And it's going global.

[The2ndWheel]

19. Not just big box stores

Nations, governments, religions, economies, etc, they all work the same way. All organizations want to grow and make everything identical to itself.

Holy crap! Wal-Mart is acting in the exact way that you would expect it to!

[eppur_se_muova]

21. So it wouldn't matter to you whether this is Wal-Mart or Ben and Jerry's?

'Coz I'm pretty sure it does matter.

[The2ndWheel]

22. Two different animals, but

increasing market share is the goal of any organized effort.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. I was never in a Wal-Mart until 1989 when I moved to Texas. Ten years later, I was sitting

in their World Home Office in Bentonville, AR (I did not work for Wal-Mart).

[NeedleCast]

16. Wow, that's horrifying

While I admit to shopping at super-centers like Wal-Mart and Target from time to time I've really rededicated myself to shopping locally as much as possible.

[Echo In Light]

18. Like a bad rash across the cultural landscape

[Ron Green]

20. What makes the growth of Wal*Mart so dangerous

is that their strategy from the very beginning was to kill the economic centers of small towns (albeit some that weren't doing a good job) by establishing car-based shopping areas outside of town that were then controlled by a distant corporate office.

The next important move was to keep waving the flag and playing the "folksy" local cousin while building a Chinese supply route. The stores are now designed to feed a pathological shopping-for-needless-crap habit created in part by the deaths of all those once-vibrant town centers.

Of course, people who aren't keenly aware of this and aren't politically committed to resisting it will show up in Wal*Mart, because of low prices (never mind the many hidden costs.) You see plenty of Wal*Mart defenders here on DU, whining about "my only choice."

[leveymg]

23. 4393 dead Main Streets since 1962

The Russians couldn't have been more destructive if they had invaded the US in 1962.

[951-Riverside]

24. I'd rather have more welfare queens than walmart employees n/t