The home of Walmart wants to beat sprawl

In his prime, Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, loved to fly. In the 1970s and 1980s, before anyone could stare at satellite pictures on Google Maps, he would take a Cessna 414 and bank over towns, trying to judge where to open new stores. The best locations would be at the edge of towns, where America’s expanding network of highways could bring customers to the firm’s “discount cities”, each with at least five acres of land, most of it given over to car parking. The stores thrived, growing with the suburbanisation of America, and made the Walton family rich. Though politicians and residents attacked the firm for leaving downtowns desolate, Walton hardly cared. If the customer liked to drive out of town in search of low prices, so be it.