Bookstore-less Bronx

“We are just as interested in knowledge and reading as anybody else. We just don’t have the access to the things that the rest of New Yorkers do”: The New York Times reports that the Bronx is about to lose a Barnes & Noble, the borough’s lone general-interest bookstore. The reason: impossibly high rent. Saks Off 5th will replace the bookstore.

This browsable map, from the organization Unite for Literacy, shows where books are and aren’t across the United States. The Bronx already appears to qualify as a book desert.

At what point do those in positions of power recognize that bookstores (like record stores before them) are cultural resources worth protecting?