I can’t wait for Edgartown Hardware to move out of downtown. For three generations my family and I have shopped there. You can’t beat the service and friendly attitude. But in the last 10 years or so we’ve taken our business elsewhere. The traffic. All those people from away shopping for T-shirts and baubles. Who can find a parking place? The move to the former Old Colony dealership will be good for Edgartown Hardware’s business and it will be good for me — but it will also be the last breath for the kind of downtown once common throughout the Island. Oak Bluffs perished years ago. Vineyard Haven is teetering. What caused all this?

The concept of “mixed use” may be one key — a real downtown features both public and commercial places — post offices, police stations, town halls and public parks all mingle with a plethora of shops (both bohemian and square), restaurants, grocery stores, art galleries, theatres and, yes, hardware emporiums. When everyday public functions are subtracted, all that’s left is shopping. It happened in Oak Bluffs when the town offices were moved to the new “city on a hill” on School street and in Edgartown when the post office moved out of town center.

Another traditional answer for the gutting of downtowns all over America is the creation of big box stores and malls on the town’s outskirts — an imposition from outside that pulls shoppers away from town center. But here on the Island it’s the opposite — hordes of transient shoppers are pushing “real” businesses — and residents — out of downtown.

Tourism is mostly regarded favorably by town planners because they bring “life” to downtown. But what kind of life, and for whom? What activities draw all those folks thronging our streets? A civic event? A need for light bulbs and faucets — or for baubles?

Perhaps a more interesting question is what is a downtown for, and for whom? I always thought it was for those who lived in town. And not just for shopping for paint and sandpaper, but for our mental, physical and spiritual health as well. When residents use their downtown, it becomes a kind of social center that is very different from a downtown inhabited by strangers. You see the same faces over and over again. By chance meetings, acquaintances become friends — at least the possibility exists.

Our social networks are composed of people we know on many different levels. You can think of it as a set of concentric circles. In the center are family and intimate friends, in the next circle are those folks we know less well but still feel intimate with, and in the outer ring are acquaintances — all those people we nod to in the street and stop to chat with. Health, both mental and physical, is improved — at least that’s what medical and psychological research tells us — when we have a full menu of friends both intimate and casual. When we lose that opportunity to chat with acquaintances on Main street, we lose a part of our healthy social life.

But what if our downtowns are actually designed for tourists — for strangers? A center of social life is replaced by a commercial one. The streets become conveyor belts for consumers, carrying them from one shop to another in a quest for the perfect T-shirt or hamburger. And, after a while, our streets begin to actually look like conveyor belts. Take Oak Bluffs — all those new signs and stripes painted on the macadam. “Go here, not there,” they tell us. Townsfolk already know where to go — so these intrusive street glyphs are not for us. They are for the strangers.

Oh — and here’s another thought. Taxes. I have not done a study of this, but I bet that if I did I would find that a big chunk of our tax dollars go for directing, protecting and nurturing all those strangers in our midst. The signs need to be posted, the streets painted, the hordes directed and prevented from hurting themselves. They leave — we stay and pay their bills.

Edgartown Hardware is moving? Good for me — now I can get there. Bad for the residents of Edgartown; it’s just one more step in the mallification of a once “real” place.

Gazette contributor Sam Low is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Oak Bluffs.