There is a handsome black man offering small mountains of melons where the stalls end. Tell him you are not enough of an expert to choose one you would like to have perfect for the day after tomorrow, and he will not only pick one out that he assures you will be just right (as it turns out to be), but gives you a lesson in choosing your next melon, whether cranshaw, honeydew or watermelon, wherever you may happen to buy it. He cares that you will always get a good one and enjoy it. (“The Farmers Go to Market,” California Living, San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine, February 6, 1972.)
There is no doubt that this is far more human and enlivening than the supermarket conveyor belt. The critical question lies with the economics of the operation. Is there a reasonable economic basis for a marketplace of many shops? Or are markets ruled out by the efficiencies of the supermarket?
There do not seem to be any economic obstacles more serious than those which accompany the start of any business. The major problem is one of coordination—coordination of individual shops to form one coherent market and coordination of many similar shops, from several markets, to make bulk purchase arrangements.
If individual shops are well located, they can operate competitively, at profit margins of up to 5 per cent of sales (“Expenses in Retail Business,” National Cash Register, Dayton, Ohio, p. 15). According to National Cash Register figures, this profit margin stays the same, regardless of size, for all convenience food stores. The small stores are often undercut by supermarkets because they are located by themselves, and therefore cannot offer shoppers
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46 MARKET OF MANY SHOPS
the same variety at one stop, as the supermarket. However, if many of these small shops are clustered and centrally located, and together they offer a variety comparable to the supermarket, then they can compete effectively with the chain supermarkets.
The one efficiency that chain stores do maintain is the efficiency of bulk purchase. But even this can be offset if groups of similar shops, all over the town, coordinate their needs and set up bulk purchase arrangements. For example, in the Bay Area there are a number of flower vendors running their business from small carts on the street. Although each vendor manages his own affairs independently, all the vendors go in together to buy their flowers. They gain enormously by purchasing their flowers in bulk and undersell the established florists three to one.
Of course, it is difficult for a market of many shops to get started—it is hard to find a place and hard to finance it. We propose a very rough and simple structure in the beginning, that can be filled in and improved over time. The market in the photo, in Lima, Peru, began with nothing more than freestanding columns and aisles. The shops—most of them no more than six feet by nine—were built up gradually between the columns.
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| A market in Peru . . . |
began with nothing more than columns.
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TOWNS
| A spectacular example of a simple wood structure that has been modified and enlarged over the years is the Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. |
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| The Tike Place Market—a market of many shops in Seattle. |
Therefore:
Instead of modern supermarkets, establish frequent marketplaces, each one made up of many smaller shops which are autonomous and specialized (cheese, meat, grain, fruit, and so on). Build the structure of the market as a minimum, which provides no more than a roof, columns which define aisles, and basic services. Within this structure allow the different shops to create their own environment, according to their individual taste and needs.
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| 250 |
*!• •$*
Make the aisles wide enough for small delivery carts and for a dense throng of pedestrians—perhaps 6 to I 2 feet wide—building thoroughfare (iOi) ; keep the stalls extremely small so that the rent is low—perhaps no more than six feet by nine feet— shops which need more space can occupy two—individually owned shops (87); define the stalls with columns at the corners only—columns at the corners (212); perhaps even let the owners make roofs for themselves—canvas roofs (244) ; connect the aisles with the outside so that the market is a direct continuation of the pedestrian paths in the city just around it—pedestrian street (100). . . .
47 health center*
. . . the explicit recognition of the life cycle as the basis for every individual life will do a great deal to help people’s health in the community—life cycle (26) ; this pattern describes the more specific institutions which help people to care for themselves and their health.
More than 90 per cent of the people walking about in an ordinary neighborhood are unhealthy, judged by simple biological criteria. This ill health cannot be cured by hospitals or medicine.
Hospitals put the emphasis on sickness. They are enormously expensive; they are inconvenient because they are too centralized; and they tend to create sickness, rather than cure it, because doctors get paid when people are sick.
By contrast, in traditional Chinese medicine, people pay the doctor only when they are healthy; when they are sick, he is obliged to treat them, without payment. The doctors have incentives to keep people well.
A system of health care which is actually capable of keeping people healthy, in both mind and body, must put its emphasis on health, not sickness. It must therefore be physically decentralized so that it is as close as possible to people’s everyday activities. And it must be able to encourage people in daily practices that lead to health. The core of the solution, as far as we can see, must be a system of small, widely distributed, health centers, which encourage physical activities—swimming, dancing, sports, and fresh air—and provide medical treatment only as an incidental side of these activities.
There is converging evidence and speculation in the health
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care literature that health centers with these characteristics, organized according to the philosophy of health maintenance, are critical. (See, for example: William H. Glazier, “The Task of Medicine,” Scientific American, Vol. 228, No. 4, April 1973, pp. 13—17; and Milton Roemer, “Nationalized Medicine for America,” Transaction, September 1971, p. 31.)
We know of several attempts to develop health care programs which are in line with this proposal. In most of the cases, though, the programs fall short in their hopes because, despite their good intentions, they still tend to cater to the sick, they do not work to maintain health. Take, for example, the so-called “community mental health centers” encouraged by the United States National Institute of Mental Health during the late 1960’s. On paper, these centers are intended to encourage health, not cure sickness.
In practice it is a very different story. We visited one of the most advanced, in San Anselmo, California. The patients sit around all day long; their eyes are glazed; they are half-enthusi-astically doing “clay therapy” or “paint therapy.” One patient came up to us and said, “Doctor,” his eyes shining with happiness, “this is a wonderful mental health center; it is the very best one I have ever been in.” In short, the patients are kept as patients; they understand themselves to be patients; in certain cases they even revel in their role as patients. They have no useful occupation, no work, nothing useful they can show at the end of a day, nothing to be proud of. The center, for all its intentions to be human, in fact reinforces the patients’ idea of their own sickness and encourages the behavior of sickness, even while it is preaching and advocating health.