[chuckinca]

The Rutgers article is about rural towns. Growing up in the suburbs or inner city was very different. We didn't have a friendly Ace hardware man who fixed broken stuff. The advent of the big boxes has nearly wiped out the large chains like K-Mart, Sears, Macy's, etc that were the center pieces of the suburban malls. We hate going to Wally World but find ourselves shopping there all the time because they have just about everything you need under one roof. The quality may not be tops in many items, but the much lower prices and convenience are hard to pass up.