Following is an article from "New Urban News" and I thought it worth my doing a lot of typing - so please everyone - read it.  And I quote:

A delegation of new urbanists and Mississippians returned from Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, in mid-January with a promise that the discount retailer would participate in a charrette writing a SmartCode plan for a section of Pass Christian, where the company may rebuild a store destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.  As New Urban News went to press, three Wal-Mart representatives - director of architecture Bill Carroll, director of non-prototypical projects Don Mosely, and senior public affairs manager Kimberly Randle - were attending the start of the five-day session on the Gulf Coast.

As a follow-up to last October's Mississippi Renewal Forum, six Wal-Mart executives, including three top figures in the Real Estate and Design department, conferred in Bentonville with Laura Hall of Fisher & Hall Urban Design, Santa Rosa, California; Victor Dover of Dover, Kohl & Partners, Coral Gables, Florida; Malcolm Jones, chief administrative officer of Pass Christian, and two other residents of the community, which had a population of about 6,600 before Hurricane Katrina struck.

Hall went as leader of the new urbanist team that worked on Pass Christian this fall.  The team designed the pedestrian-friendly "Wal-Mart Village."  Dover was leader of the team for Ocean Springs, a 17,000 population Mississippi city where the Renewal Forum participants saw the potential of incorporating a Wal-Mart into a proposed transit-oriented development.

WORKING ON URBAN FORMATS        Hall said the delegation learned that "Wal-Mart is actively working on what they call 'non-prototypical' designs, including green and multilevel urban buildings."  She said the environmentally advanced stores the company is proudest of - those in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colorado - "have lots of cool 'green' stuff, but both buildings still have long blank walls and sit behind large parking lots."

Executives showed examples of urban, multilevel buildings -- most of which appeared to have public streets in front of them -- in Honolulu; Baldwin Hills, California; Long Beach, California; Coral Springs, Florida; and Korea.  However, Hall noted that Wal-Mart officials said "they see this model being used mostly in dense urban settings outside of the US."

Wal-Mart executives questioned the appropriateness of the style that Ben Pentreath of the Prince of Wales Foundation for the Built Environment used in designing a mixed-use, multilevel Wal-Mart for Pass Christian during the October forum.  Nonetheless, they claimed they were interested in having a store in Pass Christian that reflects the South.  Prior to the Forum, they hadn't considered an urban building model to be suitable along the Gulf Coast.  "They said they've only built urban buildings where there was already an urban setting, and mostly out of the US,"  Hall noted.  "They normally don't create the urban setting themselves."

Pentreath had sketched the Wal-Mart Village -- a design in which apartments and townhouses, with small shops occupying much of the ground floor, would surround a large portion of a Super Wal-Mart.  Parking would be hidden behind.  Streets and sidewalks would make a setting comfortable for walking.  "It humanized big-box retail," Pentreath said.  Thomas Low of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. did a site plan of how a Wal-Mart could fir into a new Pass Christian neighborhood.

Early this year Wal-Mart executives still knew little about the SmartCode.  But when told that adoption of the form-based code and its regulating plan i Pass Christian could permit construction of the Wal-Mart Village, at lease one executive seemed pleased, praising the idea that the same rules would apply to Wal-Mart that apply to other retailers -- something that is not always the case when a Wal-Mart becomes the target of local protests.  Since the January meeting, a series of emails and phone calls has impressed Hall with "how much the Wal-Mart real estate and design folks really seem to enjoy these new ideas."

The municipality is eager to have Wal-Mart reestablish a store in Pass Christian.  Before Katrina, revenue from sales at Wal-Mart amounted to 15percent of the city budget.  The Wal-Mart property will be included in the city's SmartCode regulating plan.  Hall expects to have "a very real plan/design for that property by the end of the charrette."

Later in January Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott met with Prince Charles for two hours in London, where he sought advice on how to improve the company's environmental credentials.  The meeting took place because Scott had met Charles at a White House banquet last year and reportedly had also been impressed by Pentreath's efforts in Pass Christian.

During the Renewal Forum a high-density mixed-used development was proposed for the existing Ocean Springs Wal-Mart location.  The long-term plan included light-rail access on the south side of Highway 90.  "Wal-Mart officials were present at the charrette and worked with our design team to some extent," said the city's planning director, Donovan Scruggs.  The store, undamaged, reopened within days after the hurricane and any move toward placing dense development around it appear to be far off.

UNQUOTE

In this article, I'm hearing that Wal-Mart is willing (in not down right eager) to build stores that townships (like Tehachapi) would feel more kindly toward.

Any thoughts?

Dear editor ..... where has my beloved spell check gone?  Please bring it back.  My dictionary is worn and weary.

Holy Cow ..... Gonzales says there are problems, of which he cannot speak, for which he is responsible yet not to blame and he is the only one who can clean up the mess that he can neither confirm nor deny, exits.

I'm agreeing with the sentors.  How does this guy keep his job?  They say they don't believe him.  The committee has indicated he is completely untrustworthy.

Gonzales is the the guy in charge of our Justice Department.  How can this be so funny.  I laughed till I cried .... then I cried because it really isn't funny at all.

If you live outside the Tehachapi city limits - Stallion Springs, Bear Valley Springs, Golden Hills, Alpine Forest - can you petition the City?  Vote for City officials?  Vote on City bonds, etc?

We've owned property here for 12 years but moved here full time a couple years ago and I just don't know.  I know, how sad. 

Some one enlighted me, please.

Been really thinking about the coming Wal-Mart.  I have real twisted feelings. 

First, I'm not exactly sure what part of Historic Downtown Tehachapi we are trying to protect.  We have about 3 square blocks starting at the Marketplace and ending around the Apple Shed and then moving west from Tehachapi Blvd to about "E" Street.  The rest of that area represents a lot of pretty  run down looking businesses, empty lots, strip malls with absolutely no "old town" style and facing all caddy wombus, and don't even get me started on the Benz garbage piles - yeah, along Tehachapi Blvd and a real welcome to people passing via 58.  So, what style are we desparate to maintain? 

We have a lot of out-of-town company.  I proudly take them over to the bakery, or breakfast at the Apple Shed, down Robinson and Green and into some of the shops and art gallery on the corner of Tehachapi Blvd. and Green.  That's it.  We go up to the loop and hope for a train.  We drive over to the ostrich farm - that's pretty cool.  So, if you want to get your nails done - you have so many choices it will make you dizzy.  But - should you want to purchase a pretty dress ..... I mean, I try hard to shop in Tehachapi.  But you have to work at it.  So, the shopping isn't great and the old town look is limited to our 3 square blocks.

What horror will Wal-Mart do to the shopping and the look?

But, of course, Wal-Mart is one big ugly store.  Especially with a hugh parking lot out front.  Whose gonna say different?  But, ya know, that's Albertsons and Rite-Aid/Save Mart, etc.  I'm not hearing any outcry over those shopping centers.  Why the City didn't encourage the Wal-Mart people to buy land on the east side of the tracks (like Home Depot) or even on the other side of the freeway (like Holiday Inn) that's anyone's guess. 

I read some articles about Wal-Mart and in many cities they have done some major "remodeling" from their standard look.  Put the parking lot in the rear, designed the store front so that it looked kinda like multiple office buildings, set some land aside for grass and trees.

Is it possible to get a movement together; put pressure on our city representatives, and they in turn put some pressure on Wal-Mart to consider doing in Tehachapi what they did in Mississippi and other Gulf Coast areas?

I think we have to be realistic about progress.  And we also should understand that our city officials LOVE strip malls and honestly, don't you dare tell me there is some kind of "plan."  Unless of course the plan is to have growth that is erratic and hodge-podge.  So Wal-Mart is coming .... can we make it a little attractive?

We just returned from a wonderful vacation back east.  Spent 10 days in Washington DC.  Loved it and you can't come away from those memorials and museums without being a proud American.  They are fabulous.

We drove from DC to Kentucky to Michigan, then to Ohio, up into New York and Niagra, then back to DC.  It was so very obvious that all the transit systems back east have left California in the dust.  We took the Metro from Annapolis to DC everyday we were there.  It is cheep, efficient, clean and so very easy.  And the freeways (expressways) are clean and in good condition.  True, you run into repairs frequently, but we were delighted with the turnpikes and state highways.

Forty one years ago, I moved here from Detroit.  I can remember like it was yesterday driving from the airport and being amazed at the clean and well kept freeways.  Boy, this state should be ashamed of what we have settled for in the way of mass transit.  Our freeways are now a mess.  And it only took forty years to get ourselves into the disaster we call our transit system.

Why is that?  With gasoline prices increasing every single year for longer than I want to remember - that means the taxes collected by California have increased.  Why are we building those stupid (not a word I use lightly) carpool lane overpasses everywhere in LA and Orange County?  How many ba-zillion dollars are wasted there instead of a rail system?  Or something - isn't there a great mind somewhere in the office that decides how to spend transportation dollars? 

Someone (me and you) have been asleep at the wheel on this one.