Doesn't that question simply devolve into, "How much more are you willing to pay for variety and diversity?" Shopping at boutique stores certainly offer a more

Doesn't that question simply devolve into, "How much more are you willing to pay for variety and diversity?" Shopping at boutique stores certainly offer a more memorable shopping experience, better dining, or more engaging products than Amazon or Walmart, but at substantially greater cost/risk. When efficiency/safety becomes primary among your desiderata, variety and diversity will suffer. This is the exact conundrum covered well in Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" which bemoaned the social cost arising from city/village design that was optimized to serve too narrow a set of priorities, thereby eliminating opportunity to experience and share common spaces in more than one way.