I’ve always loved this quote from Todd Litman (previous reference here):
I consider wheeled luggage the only significant new mode of transportation to develop so far this century, meaning that it significantly affects daily life for a major share of the population.
Well, here’s another observation, this one by Witold Rybcynski in his new book, Makeshift Metropolis. It’s the domestic equivalent of the shipping container – a seemingly small convenience that revolutionalized an industry and transformed urban regions.
The device that enabled the supermarket to develop into a big box was the humble shopping cart. In 1936, Sylvan N. Goldman, an Oklahoma supermarket-chain owner, introduced a wheeled frame that was capable of carrying two removable baskets; when not in use, the frame collapsed to save space.
It took another decade for the shopping cart to assume its present form: a large wheeled basket, with a rear flap that allows carts to be nested inside one another for compact storage. Ungainly and crude, the lowly shopping cart has remained unaltered for seventy years, making up in practicality what it lacks in elegance.
From supermarket, to strip mall, to big box, to power centre – this decentralized retail fabric is all most people in suburbia know. Made possible by the shopping cart.
Maybe it’s a reflection of my recent urban-core, car-free living, but I now associate shopping carts more with homeless people then with shopping. I think I only used a shopping cart once in the past year, and that was to put my bike gear in while I shopped. If can’t carry it in a basket, I certainly can’t carry it home.
Agreed –
I always use the hand basket because that’s what you can carry home (walking).
I like the wheeled shopping baskets best- the right size for amounts you can walk with, but you save the carrying for when you leave. They are big at the T&T’s. http://www.trolleybasket.ca/images/blue2.jpg
Hi Gordon,
I am a third year nutrition student at the Univeristy of Alberta. I would like to use that picture you have of a shopping cart in a nutrition resource brochure for one of my classes, it will not acutally be distributed, it will just be shown to my professor for marking. We were told we have to receive permission for all images we include in our brochure to make sure we aren’t violating copyright laws. If you are ok with me using this image please respond and give me the ok to include it in my brochure by Wednesday March 9th, 2011. Thanks,
Laura White