The seduction of Whole Foods Market

I was talking with a fellow advocate this weekend, and she commented about how the thought of getting a Whole Foods Market, especially in under-retailed areas, mesmerizes citizens to a state of being much less critical and evaluative when considering development proposals.

Anything green or environmental, like green buildings, often has the same equivalently mentally debilitating effect...

when I worked for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a leading nutrition advocacy group, the director used to say "after not smoking, the most important health behavior you can adopt is to eat less fat." For the typical person, the most important pro-environmental choice they can make is to vastly reduce their use of automobiles, especially single occupant vehicle trips. You can have the greenest building around, but if you don't change your mobility practices, it doesn't really matter how green the building is, if you're driving you're damaging the environment, killing Iraqis and U.S. soldiers, and wrecking the U.S. balance of payments--among other things.

The great urban design writer John King has a nice piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, "San Francisco's new Whole Foods" He writes:

The new Whole Foods Market in San Francisco shows with meticulous precision why upscale grocery stores are coveted by communities that want to see themselves as fully rounded or on the map.

In the process, it also shows the design gap between mainstream America's stylish retail environments and the boilerplate architecture that surrounds them.

We've taken the old phrase "beauty is only skin deep" and turned it inside out. Too many buildings are as perfunctory as can be, shells that don't even try to add hints of surprise or delight. Then you go inside the savvier shops or restaurants, and every inch bristles with innovative life.