i agree with you that a community where people can afford to live and work is good, but the work needs to actually be productive. if a retail store's only value is unrelated to their retail business, then i think it's fair to call them only aesthetic.

paying people to work in shops that are worse in every way than the alternative except for being local is not productive. no real value is being created. it's a make-work scheme, and paying those workers to not work would be more efficient.