We need a big list of policies in place to nurture and promote locally owned and operated, sustainable businesses over huge impersonal ones that can easily shut down an office and leave town. 

A major reason huge ugly big-box stores took over our neighborhood is they were never required to pay for the harm they caused and still continue to cause - pollution, traffic jam, minimum paid jobs that left employees to rely on social programs, etc. It's high time for that to CHANGE. We are already seeing huge retailers going out of business - Circuit City, Borders; and more of them will, in the economic slump as well as a result of simply not being built on a sustainable business model. Their vacuum should be filled by local businesses, if they are helped initially by some government incentives, otherwise unemployment will be choking us.