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In Los Angeles, a Wal-Mart building permit is getting a once-over. In New York, the City Council is investigating a possible land deal with the retailer’s developer in Brooklyn. A state senator in California is pushing for a formal audit of a proposed Wal-Mart in San Diego. And in Boston and its suburbs, residents are pressuring politicians to disclose whether they have received contributions from the company.

All of it in the past week.

Wal-Mart has worked hard in recent years to polish its reputation and give elected officials, community groups and shoppers a reason to say yes to their stores, especially as it pushes aggressively into big — and historically hostile — cities. Now, the revelation of a bribery scandal involving the retailer’s Mexican subsidiary is giving critics a new reason to say no.

“Overnight, the environment has shifted in terms of Wal-Mart’s strategy in big cities, in winning over local politicians,” said Dorian T. Warren, a political science professor at Columbia who is writing a book about Wal-Mart’s efforts to expand into Chicago and Los Angeles.

The New York Times disclosed last week that Wal-Mart had found credible evidence that its Mexican subsidiary — the retailer’s biggest foreign operation, which opened 431 stores last year — had paid bribes and that an internal inquiry into the matter had been suppressed at corporate headquarters in Arkansas. The Mexican government has begun investigations into the retailer’s dealings with local officials.

Felipe Calderón, the Mexican president, said last week that he was “indignant” about the company’s behavior, and some elected officials across the United States joined the chorus of outrage. In other countries where Wal-Mart operates, including China and India, the reaction was slower, but analysts said they expected the company to face significant new obstacles.

Wal-Mart last week took several steps intended to demonstrate it was serious about getting to the bottom of the bribery scandal — and preventing anything like it happening again — but the damage from the revelations could be problematic, analysts said.

“It gives more power to critics, and that might prove to be the biggest negative of all,” said David Strasser, an analyst with Janney Montgomery Scott.

In the United States, Wal-Mart has largely exhausted places in suburban and rural areas to build new stores, and is focusing on many of the nation’s biggest cities. That means a lot of red tape for approvals. In the last few years, Wal-Mart has smoothed the way with donations to politicians and local nonprofit organizations, and arguments that it helps economic growth and provides healthy groceries.

Steven Restivo, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said the bribery investigation would not affect those expansion plans. “We remain committed to opening stores all across the U.S., including large cities,” he said.

There has always been opposition to the new stores — for years, small store owners, for example, complained they would be put out of business by Wal-Mart’s low prices — but the scandal in Mexico has provided opponents with new ammunition.

Union leaders, who have been particularly critical of Wal-Mart’s workplace practices, called last week for the resignation of the chairman, S. Robson Walton, and the chief executive, Michael T. Duke. “The corruption scandal and reported cover-up exposed an unacceptable failure of leadership within Wal-Mart,” said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

Most of the stepped-up opposition, however, has been directed at blocking specific expansion plans.

In New York, City Councilman Erik Dilan said the housing and buildings committee that he heads will conduct an investigation into a land-use transfer at a Brooklyn site Wal-Mart has been considering. The New York state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, was already reviewing a contract for the site, a vacant 14-acre lot in East New York owned by the state.

In Los Angeles, opponents of a Wal-Mart site in Chinatown were using the bribery scandal to supplement an appeal they have filed that would rescind the project’s building permit.

In the Boston area, Wal-Mart is eyeing three possible stores, in Somerville and Watertown and in the Roxbury neighborhood. Leaders of the local anti-Wal-Mart coalition are now demanding that the company publicly identify its financial contributions to elected officials, local organizations and community leaders.

This pressure on politicians, in particular, to respond to the suggestion Wal-Mart is buying them off could spread to other cities, said Professor Warren of Columbia.

“There definitely is a pattern of giving campaign contributions to politicians who support what they want,” he said of Wal-Mart. But because the Mexican accusations include bribing local officials, “when you take that to the context of New York or Los Angeles, it’s going to make it harder for politicians to accept campaign contributions from Wal-Mart.”

Mr. Restivo, the Wal-Mart spokesman, said the company would not change its pattern of giving to politicians and nonprofits in areas where it wants to open. In New York, for instance, its foundation has given more than $13 million to nonprofits since 2007, and the company gave almost $200,000 to Republican political committees in 2011.

“We are proud of the work our foundation has done,” he said, and “we support those who stand for issues that are important to our customers, associates and shareholders in the areas where we do business. When we make political contributions, we do so in an ethical, legal and transparent way.”

For Wal-Mart, the new obstacles come after a long and concerted battle to win over its critics.

For years, labor unions said it did not pay fair wages. Environmentalists said it was a polluter. And female employees, claiming discrimination, were locked in a lawsuit against the company.

And city after city denied Wal-Mart entry.

About seven years ago, as Wall Street analysts began to refer to the negative media coverage of the company as “headline risk,” the stock price fell and Wal-Mart decided it needed to burnish its image.

H. Lee Scott Jr., a Wal-Mart board member who was then Wal-Mart’s chief executive, made a public argument that better business practices would help the company.

With the help of Leslie Dach, a former adviser to President Clinton hired in 2006 to handle external relations, Mr. Scott and other executives met with activists to improve Wal-Mart’s labor and health care records, to outline an aggressive energy conservation plan, to position Wal-Mart as a company that was bringing fresh, affordable food to underserved areas and to develop initiatives to help promote female workers.

The company’s fiercest critics doubted the efforts, saying they were public-relations moves with little substance, but at least in some circles, Wal-Mart was seen as a better corporate citizen.

That helped smooth over opposition to new stores in some cities. Wal-Mart will soon open its sixth store in Chicago, has two additional sites approved in Los Angeles, is building two in San Diego, and has six planned in Washington.

What was not previously known until the Times report on the bribery scandal is that at about the same time Mr. Scott began the offensive to improve Wal-Mart’s image in the United States, he also rebuked the company’s internal bribery investigation in Mexico for being overly aggressive. The investigation was soon dropped.

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Calendar of Events:

• Monday at 7:30 pm at the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, 489 Prince Avenue, Athens, GA 30601- Forum hosted by the Athens Federation of Neighborhoods on the proposed Wal-Mart development. Panelists: Melissa Link, Tony Eubanks, James Garland, Lila Grisar, and Charlie Maddox.

• Tuesday at 7 pm at Athens City Hall- Mayor and Commission meeting. Speak out on the record!

• Wednesday at 7 pm- Pizza and Sign making party- ask for details.

• Friday at 4:30 pm at the UGA Arch- Sign-holding to raise awareness!

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Athens got a taste of Hollywood glamour the past couple of weeks when Clint Eastwood and other stars came to town.

And with glamour comes green. A four-day shoot for “Trouble With the Curve” at the downtown bar The Globe and other locations pumped thousands of dollars into the local economy. Artists and businesspeople are hoping the city gets a little more time in the spotlight.

“Once (producers) make the financial decision to come to Georgia, we think we’re a very attractive location,” said Jeff Montgomery, the Athens-Clarke government’s liaison to the state film office.

It wasn’t the first time Athens graced the big screen — part of the 2000 comedy “Road Trip” was shot at the University of Georgia — but it was the first major motion picture filmed here in 12 years.

In other parts of the state, an incentives package the legislature passed in 2008 for television and films has boosted the industry. Projects that spend more than $500,000 in Georgia are eligible for tax credits of 20 to 30 percent, as well as sales tax credits on in-state equipment purchases.

Since then, the movie and television business in Georgia has grown tenfold, from a $244 million industry to $2.4 billion, according to the state Department of Economic Development.

“The money spent, it goes all through the community,” said Lee Thomas, director of the department’s entertainment division.

No one knows yet how much “Trouble With the Curve” spent in Athens — studio Warner Bros. will file a report once production wraps up — but the crew stayed in local hotels, ate meals from local caterers, paid for local security and hired local residents as extras.

One recent shoot in Atlanta netted workers, businesses and governments $13 million and created jobs for hundreds of people for two months, Warner Bros. reported to the state.

In Savannah — best known as the setting for “Forrest Gump” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” — three to four movies shoot per year, said Jay Self, director of the city’s film office. Those productions brought about $14 million in direct spending to Savannah in 2009 and 2010, which conservatively translates to a $30 million economic impact.

Serving as the backdrop for films also drives tourism, Self said. When moviegoers see Savannah onscreen, it makes them more likely to visit, he said.

“It developed a lot of press about Savannah, helped define it and brought a spike in tourism,” he said.

Some Athenians are hoping the nascent film industry here will have a similar effect.

Members of Create Athens, a group that promotes the arts as economic development, attended an Atlanta expo, The Next Cool Event, last month to pique interest in Athens as a location for film shoots. Create Athens board chairman Ed Nichols called the event “very successful.”

The arts, including film, support 465 local businesses by generating $165 million in sales and have created almost 8,000 jobs in Athens, Nichols told the Athens-Clarke Economic Development Foundation in February.

“Those are significant numbers,” he said. “I think it’s important we recognize those dollars are being spent in our community.”

The film industry has the potential for even more growth, said Danielle Robarge, a web designer and founder of AthFest’s Sprockets music-video competition. She runs a group called Film Athens that serves as a news and jobs clearinghouse for the film community.

Hundreds of current and former Athens residents already work at least part-time in film and television, Robarge said. Among the best-known are director James Ponsoldt, who recently sold his second feature “Smashed” to Sony Pictures; Mitchell Jarrett, whose “The Taiwan Oyster” debuted at the massive Austin, Texas, festival and conference South by Southwest; and Curtis Crowe, the construction coordinator for more than a dozen movies and TV shows, including the upcoming comedy “Neighborhood Watch,” starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill. Works by two other Athens filmmakers, Craig Zobel and David Bruckner, are headed to the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this year.

Not all the jobs are specialized. Union wages for everyday occupations like medics, carpenters, hair stylists and electricians are $25 an hour or more.

“People are making this their career,” Robarge said. “They’re good union jobs, jobs with benefits.”

Often, though, they have to travel to Atlanta or even Los Angeles to find steady work.

“We want to build an industry here so people can stay,” she said.

At least one other production is headed to Athens soon. The football-themed TV show “Necessary Roughness” plans to shoot scenes at Sanford Stadium, said Thomas, the state economic development official.

Now that Athens is a certified camera-ready community, a state designation that tells filmmakers local officials are prepared to deal with shoots, Thomas said she expects more projects to want to film in Athens.

Athens-Clarke County sought the designation in September after talking with members of Film Athens and Create Athens and realizing that the city could attract bigger projects, not just independent pictures, Montgomery said.

“We’ve always been somewhat film-ready or film-friendly,” he said.

“Trouble With the Curve” started shooting in Athens later than planned and didn’t end until Monday, but Athens-Clarke officials were able to facilitate it anyway, which impressed the crew, Thomas said.

“That’s the kind of thing that’s going to be very popular with producers,” she said.

In “Trouble With the Curve,” Athens will fill in for Asheville, N.C., another quirky Southern college town.

“It’s a little bit eclectic,” Thomas said of Athens. “It’s got a youthful feel to it, lots of little shops and restaurants.”

The movie follows three baseball scouts, played by Eastwood, Justin Timberlake and John Goodman, and Eastwood’s character’s daughter (Amy Adams) as Eastwood seeks out one last prospect before losing his sight.

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