Here is a case where a local merchant is struggling to keep his doors open no matter how bad business is. The speed at which corporations remove money from a community is staggering. Wal-Mart wires money back to the corporate office twice a day. It doesn't stay in the community long enough to allow the community to make any use of it. Accounts, lawyers, architects, etc. are all centrally located, so local professionals will disappear.
Independent retailers hire local professionals and spend their profits locally.
The money circulates through the local economy allowing its benefits to multiply over and over again. It is economic suicide to switch from local to corporate stores. The proposed South West Area Development is designed to maximize automobile use. As populations are moved from modes of transportation that allow for interaction between people to modes that isolate them, people become isolated. This has a negative effect on the over-all community.