The draw of big cities, like New York, London, LA, or Tokyo is that they are made of a series of distinct, colorful neighborhoods, each with their own identity, vibe, and demographic. What makes them different are the small, local, mom-and-pop shops—not the chains of identical mass retail stores.

 You walk down your high street. What do you prefer to see there? The economist will say: Walmart, Best Buy, the Gap. Scale economies — cheaper prices — better for “consumers”! But the human being will say: an independent cafe, a good bookshop, a boutique clothing store. Why? Because they offer many things that mega scale organizations don’t.

Decline of communities and local economies : globalization leads to the fragmentation and hollowing out of local economies, and the urban and rural communities they support, as multinational corporations move operations around the planet in order to increase profit margins and as they make it increasingly difficult for locally owned business to... See more

Small business owners create value in a neighborhood, but they don’t capture most of it.  withco exists to fix that by making small business owners property owners, too. 

The fate of the urban environment itself, along with the restaurants and retail that it comprises, will depend upon government interventions at every scale. Without sufficient aid to individuals and small businesses (and even with that aid, to a lesser degree), widespread closures will create a void in commercial real estate demand. Urban... See more