Building the value of uniqueness is an important part of the strategy for communities preparing to participate in the knowledge economy. Corporate globalization / corporate colonization / corporate formula branding resulting in prototypical buildings are detrimental to community uniqueness. The primary value is to those fortunate communities where corporate headquarters are located. Their often-predatory brand on the rest of us tends to make our once unique communities trend toward a globalized consumption culture of sameness. Not an environment to nurture brainpower and innovation.

Local small business provides a backbone of uniqueness. Is your local entrepreneurial level diminishing as the community looks more and more like the latest trend in retail development? Why does the big box world need an incentive funded by struggling local small businesses? Believe it or not, that is what is happening. Small local retailers contribute more taxes and jobs per square foot with no subsidies and more obstacles than encouragement. As more and more small retailers close in the tidal wave of retail consolidation, public funds to subsidize big retail developments is more illogical than ever.

Wake up America! Austin certainly has. Realizing that their uniqueness played a large role in Austin’s success in the knowledge economy has led the community to a position of not subsidizing development for corporate retailers. “Help keep Austin Weird!” is now part of the city economic development strategy to support unique local business and their creative culture. Check out the war stories and research that started this movement and for fun this Keep Austin Weird song. This is a strategy to help level the playing field that has become far to one sided in favor of big corporations that don’t need or deserve public assistance to invade our communities.

So many community leaders just don’t or won’t understand economic realities of misplaced incentives that result in further erosion of shrinking city resources. It is certainly misplaced good intentions if not flawed judgement to think that shifting finite regional levels of household retail expenditures from local business to national corporate offices will result in a net gain for local economies. Stacey Mitchell presents several examples of this spreading dilemma in a December 2003 article, Does Wal Mart Really Need Our Tax Dollars? The incentives are often clouded in double speak as illustrated in this excerpt from Stacey’s article: “Rarely are tax dollars given to local retailers. For them, it’s sink or swim in a sea of giant, subsidized competitors. When asked how Scottsdale’s small businesses were to survive the arrival of Wal-Mart and Lowe’s -- slated to receive the second largest corporate subsidy in Arizona history -- city councilor Ned O’Hearn declared, "That’s urban dynamics. This is private enterprise. This is competition."”