"It seemed to him that all the shops that served the native population - pharmacies, shoe-makers, groceries - were slowly and inexorably disappearing, replaced by slick boutiques and souvenir shops that catered to the tourists, filled with luminescent plastic gondolas from Taiwan and papier-mache masks from Hong Kong. It was the desires of the transient, not the needs of the residents that the city's merchants answered."
Quoted from "Death at La Fenice" by Donna Leon P.97 (1992)
The above paragraph is a snapshot of Venice... Does it strike a familiar note?
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It does sound familiar. On a bus yesterday, I went along two streets with many small thriving shops and then noticed a major supermarket was building a shop there. I thought about the negative impact it would have on the shopkeepers and their customers - loss of personal service, being able to buy items the major shops don't do, being able to pass the time of day with someone you know.
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