Wal-Mart Promotes Parking Lot Living

(courtesy Susan Roschke who posted this on the COMURB listserv)

From TheBoxTank “a collaborative focused on retail and urbanism” – Oct 3, 2004…

Wal-Mart Promotes Parking Lot Living

A source in Seattle points us to a story in Real Change News about "Gypsy Shoppers", a sub-culture of RV'ers that Wal-Mart has invited to use empty parking lots overnight in lieu of traditional RV parks. Wal-Mart in turn carries a full range of supplies that RV'ers purchase, and benefit from that business. The rules vary from store to store on how long a camper can park at Wal-Mart. Some stores don't allow parking as malls they are associated with have ordinances prohibiting such activity. Many have a three night limit, and others have no time limit at all. A store in Federal Way, Washington is home to a woman who has lived in the parking lot for two years.

Apparently, this patch of asphalt was "home" for them. There was no lawn to water, no real estate taxes, and the view of Mt. Rainier was killer.

The dream of living at Wal-Mart has come true for some.
Film maker Doug Hawes-Davis documents this culture in the film "This is Nowhere."

“The inherent contradiction of ‘camping ’ in a box-store parking lot seemed like the perfect starting place for exploring cultural attitudes towards nature, community, and sense of place. We were surprised, however, by how eager our interview subjects were to discuss these same themes. After the very first night of interviews we realized that we could tie together many related issues in the same film. Themes of urban sprawl, tourism, and consumerism are accessed by examining RV camping in Wal-Mart parking lots.”

We knew that the Wal-Mart parking lot has been replacing traditional venues for public space for years, hosting events ranging from army recruiting to 9-11 memorial gatherings. Allowing RV'ers to permanently park in their lots confuses how we construe new definitions of public space however. The Wal-Mart parking lot had been developing as a space that allowed for chance encounters typical of traditional public space: from the army recruiting and venue for memorializing or celebrating public events mentioned above, to acts of violence such as robbery or even killings. All of this occurs under the watchful eye of Wal-Mart surveilance, which is recently typical of traditional public spaces in larger cities. Wal-Mart is able to condone which activities are allowed in this contested space. It isn't likely that protests condemning the Bush administration would be allowed at the Wal-Mart parking lot, as they were at New York City's Union Square Park. It also isn't likely that you'll find wandering teenagers strung-out on heroin or the homeless.

But the introduction of people living in RV's in Wal-Mart parking lots for two-years at a time suggests that the parking lot is not as program specific as had been thought. Definitions of homelessness should be re-examined; how different is living in an RV from living in a cardboard box? As should definitions of what are appropriate venues for sexual activity; are two promiscuous teenagers in the back of a Chevy any different than two promiscuous seniors in an RV? How are social boundaries defined in these roaming communities and what acts are taken to define sense of place?

Or is the Wal-Mart parking lot merely a representation of a larger phenomenon found in the American landscape that favors Fordist models of specialization: strict diagrams that favor efficiency and uniformity while generating landscapes that don't allow for the flexibility demanded of local conditions. The Wal-Mart parking lot (and Wal-Mart itself) provides a familiarity from location to location that attract a segment of the population that knows what to expect whether camping (or shopping) in Tulsa Oklahoma or Redmond Washington. This effect results both from the nature of retail, which attempts to create a fictitious environment free of the uncertainties found in traditional public space, and the mass production relied upon by Wal-Mart (Ruby Tuesdays, TGIF, etc.) required to create a web of familiar retail experiences across the country.

The Wal-Mart parking lot is obviously trying to accomodate activities other than shopping that don't have a place anymore as the American landscape is changing. However it isn't doing a good job of accomodating those activities because the Fordist models used for the production of space and related infrastructure don't allow for flexible use and heterogeneous activity that may be required from location to location, and from a given moment to the next.

Gypsy Shoppers [Real Change News]
This is Nowhere [High Plains Films]