Not far from where I work is a small shopping area. It boasts a few dozen shops that straddle both sides of moderately-sized road.<\/p>\n
For the last 10 years, I have visited this shopping area occasionally. I’ve watched with interest the current levels of redundancy<\/em> in the assortment of retail establishments.<\/p>\n Let me give some examples. There are two pharmacies<\/strong>, one on either side of the road. There are two fish-and-chip<\/strong> shops, one on either side of the road. There are three hair-dressers<\/strong>. If you want to eat Italian food, you need to choose between one of the four<\/em> Italian restaurants<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I used to find the lack of variety vaguely frustrating. Having two of the limited number of shops in the strip allocated to real-estate agents<\/strong> means you don’t have room for, say, a bike shop or a second-hand bookstore – both of which the area is severely lacking.<\/p>\n Eventually, however, I realised that this was excellent disaster planning. The local shoppers can feel reassured that if a nuclear blast, asteroid strike or a global-warming catastrophe hits all of the shops on one side of the road, the shops on the other side can continue to service their needs without interruption.<\/p>\n I realised that a dirty bomb wiping out one of the two bakeries<\/strong> wouldn’t stop the locals from having access to fresh meat pies. A Vogon Destructor Fleet destroys all of the buildings in one of the two schools<\/strong> next to the shopping area? No problem; their children can continue their education.<\/p>\n The planning hasn’t been perfect, however. <\/p>\n The two chicken shops<\/strong> are on the same side of the road. So are the two banks<\/strong> and the two community centres<\/strong>. The two Asian restaurants<\/strong> are on the other side. <\/p>\n The two Christian churches<\/strong> aren’t exactly the same denomination, so there is a risk that some parts of the congregation might notice should one of the churches be wiped out.<\/p>\n There must have been some simple miscommunication when they built the two libraries<\/strong> – one turned out to be for books while the other was for videos.<\/p>\n There has also been some shop turnover that has affected the redundancy. One of the two dentists<\/strong> closed up shop. The two hardware stores<\/strong> weren’t competing head-to-head; one specialised in auto-parts, so clearly one of them had to go. It was always too much to expect both of the op shops<\/strong> to remain open for long. It was disappointing to see one of the two fruit shops<\/strong> close, but at least it was replaced by a third<\/em> bakery, so all was not lost.<\/p>\n In this context, you must understand how surreal it was for me to walk through the modest mall there, and to find that they had just opened a second post office<\/strong>! I was flabbergasted, and burst out laughing. My hypothesis must be true! How else would you explain having a new post office on the other side of the road to an old one? <\/p>\n Reality finally intruded when I walked across the road, and found the old post-office had just closed. They had migrated into the mall, not replicated.<\/p>\n I was sadly disappointed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the last 10 years, I have visited a shopping area occasionally, and I watch with interest the current levels of redundancy<\/em> in the assortment of retail establishments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,21,41,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-observation","category-story-telling","category-thoughts-from-the-shower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}