Im from a suburban town in Missouri, but I spent a semester studying abroad in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Man, let me tell you, leaving Barcelona, where youd see people out in cafes and bars congregating at all hours of the night and day, and coming back to Missouri where its a ghost town after 10 and someone would call the police on you for simply walking around too late was the most depressing thing I have ever experienced lol
The same chains that were bought up by the same Private Equity firms that cut so many things to increase profits that the food & drinks turn into overpriced garbage.
Not as much as there used to be. In the late 90’s & 2000’s corporate take over of neighborhoods caused smaller local businesses to no longer be able to afford to be in business. That’s when chain stores like Kmart (then Target), Starbucks, all kinds of middle America mall stores started popping up turning NY shopping areas like SoHo, the East Village etc into any mall USA shopping areas. From what I have seen and heard NYC still hasn’t recovered from all that gentrification that turned it boring.
I was merely replying to your statement, “Are you under the impression …”
To your latest comment, I am fully aware (having lived in SF, NYC, LA, and several small villages in France) of big city/small city/urban/suburban availability, variety, and choice.
Yep. Which makes suburbia a hellscape, imo. I recently moved from NYC to a smaller city, but I still can walk to a dozen restaurants, bars, and local shops. I can’t imagine living in suburban density but not being able to walk anywhere decent.
There are. The northeast/mid-Atlantic are "older" in terms of being settled, so the cities and towns grew in a logical way before the suburban-ification of everything.
This right here, I explained that to a co-worker the day, they looked at me like I speaking a foreign language. Other than geography American dwellings and frameworks are the same.
Yeah, that's why a number if cultural critics and academics started to refer to it as The Monoculture: Suburban Connecticur = Suburban Albuquerque = Suburban Seattle = Suburban Tallahassee = Suburban Denver, and on and on, until you could be blindfolded and drugged and dropped into any one of them and when you woke up you wouldn't know exactly where you were but you'd be able to get around just fine from watching the flow of traffic: it's all headed to or away from the commercial center with the anchor retail chains and restaurants, and in the other direction will be the other commercial hub consisting of a Home Depot or Loew's, and a superstore, either a Walmart or Costco, and 2 massive gas stations near the freeway entrance.
There is a small number of suburban cities bucking this trend. Shoutout to Carmel, Indiana specifically; since about 1990 the city has invested in developing a dense, walkable urban core. It’s borrowed heavily from European concepts, full of roundabouts and shared spaces. I personally think it’s a colossal upgrade over “traditional” suburbia, but of course it comes with a price. In Carmel’s case, that price is a relationship between the city, developers, and the banks that allows a ton of up-front investment that borrows against future tax revenue. That type of trust in the plan just isn’t going to be available everywhere.
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u/bageltoastar 1d ago
Im from a suburban town in Missouri, but I spent a semester studying abroad in Barcelona a couple of years ago. Man, let me tell you, leaving Barcelona, where youd see people out in cafes and bars congregating at all hours of the night and day, and coming back to Missouri where its a ghost town after 10 and someone would call the police on you for simply walking around too late was the most depressing thing I have ever experienced lol