Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences.

• Author: Dempsey, Joe
• Position: Political booknotes: the shopping news

GOING SHOPPING: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences

by Ann Satterthwaite Yale University Press, $39.95

"I UNDERSTAND CLEARLY THE horror, and the reason people are down and depressed, but we have got to pull together and get the economy moving again," Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening told The Washington Post at the end of September. He and four other governors had just flown to New York City, where they caught a Broadway show and ate Reuben sandwiches and cheesecake at the Carnegie Deli--all to show Americans that "it's okay to go shopping," even in the wake of a calamity.

The Lion King probably wasn't on the mind of Washington, D.C., city planner Ann Satterthwaite when she wrote Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences, but the good-faith efforts of those like Glendening to get people out there spending underscore an idea central to her book--that shopping is a public concern which should be treated as such.

Satterthwaite offers a wide-ranging look at what she considers the social and civic role of retailing, including a history of shopping and a prediction of future trends. Parts of Going Shopping feel a little nostalgic, even though the book is new--not too long ago, the sight of governors urging people to spend would have been strange--it seemed we were shopping too much, not too little. The Smiths were spending themselves into debt to keep up with the Joneses, often at the expense of spending more free time with the family, becoming more involved in the community, or simply enjoying life's ephemeral pleasures. Not only were too many Americans bowling alone, they were spending too much on shiny new bowling balls.

Satterthwaite anticipates the paradox of an economy built on consumption, something we've experienced firsthand since September 11. While shopping (well, too much shopping, anyway) may be bad for the individual, the environment, and, of course, urban planning, it's clearly vital to our nation's fiscal health. "It is hard to determine whether rising aspirations or the economy's need to sell more goods came first," she writes, "but they have been intricately connected."

While Satterthwaite couldn't have anticipated September's attacks, she does recognize that the frenetic consumerism of the 1990s was approaching an end. She warns that if Americans have finally dropped from shopping, "the retail world, whose survival depends on satisfying consumer demands, will have to respond" While no specifics...