The countryside, both European and American, has been horribly denuded by the endless rolling up and aggregation of retail, from Sears through Price Club/Costco, Carrefour, Walmart, Amazon, Dollar General... When Mary and I went on our honeymoon back in '97, we came upon this lovely agriturismo place -- a converted chateau or whatever they call them in Italian -- as we were traveling from Arezzo towards Siena. We stayed for three nights for a price that was expensive at the time, but it was magical. We went to a small store nearby and got fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, bread, peaches...
Today I doubt the store exists. In so many small towns in the French countryside there's barely any retail operating at all. Maybe a bar-tabac if you are lucky. Everybody seems to drive 10 or 15 minutes to a supermarket or hypermarket to buy everything.
Really, it's just the same dynamic as Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs back in the day, except the countryside had no intellect as powerful as Jacobs nor a villain as outsized as Moses. But people in the country are at least as dependent on the informal social fabric of neighborhoods as those in the city, thought they interact with neighbors less frequently.
We see small exceptions in some affluent places where boutique retail can be run at a loss or at low margin for nostalgic purposes. Going back into the 80s I remember how the general store near Mark's parents' house in Warren was owned by a Wall Street type and run as a labor of love. In most places that just doesn't work. Nobody has the stomach to run the losses.
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