Eager to take the urban market, Home Depot (NYSE:HD) announced Wednesday that it will open a Manhattan store in 2004. The Manhattan location will complement stores already established in Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, and Staten Island.

Both Home Depot and rival Lowe's (NYSE:LOW) have traditionally thrived in suburban sprawl, where customers arrive en masse via cars and mini-vans for the lumber, nails, gardening implements, and other tools needed for home beautification and improvement.

However, let's face it, it's not like urban hipsters don't do their fair share of remodeling and do-it-yourself work as well, and in a thriving construction and home improvement market where modernization equals increased value, it makes perfect sense for Home Depot to venture into the lucrative and well-populated Manhattan market.

You wouldn't be alone if you wondered about the traditional barriers to big-box stores entering urban environments, not least of which is simple logistics. In a city teeming with people, like New York, where most citizens schlep their purchases by foot, the idea of shoppers toting heavy bags of hardware all over town can easily be met with the question, "How?"

Home Depot's solution is to offer delivery options to its urban customers, a move that makes the whole idea of buying hammers, drills, paint, and other large home improvement items a lot more pleasant to the city dweller.

When it comes to the fight for the urban customer, one where a pedestrian clientele needs multiple points of presence, Home Depot may have hit the nail on the head with this one. What better place to open shop than in the city that never sleeps? That could add up to a lot of home improvement.

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