
Why Every City Feels the Same Now - pattusk
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/why-every-city-feels-same-now/615556/
======
anm89
I have spent the last year trying to open up a cafe and small space where I
could build custom motorcycles. I think on paper it is the kind of project
that people would say brings life to a city but the city I live in seems like
they have designed their zoning laws to be as stacked as possible against
someone like me opening up a business that does not fit a cookie cutter mold
of some other existing business, at least not without hundreds of thousands of
dollars to pay lawyers and architects.The building I want to use could be
moved into tomorrow without a penny of changes.

I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing
that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which
were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

I get that I don't want a power plant or steel forge next to my house, but
that's not what we are talking about here. I can't put a cafe (literally an
espresso machine and a few tables and chairs) in a structure in residential
neighborhood without a huge investment in lawyers and architects and likely
installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a two story 3k
sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review board dislikes
the project on a whim, it's out.

And then surprise surprise, all of the things open in the city are chain
restaurants which everyone complains about backed by large corporation who
have huge budgets for construction, and architects, and lawyers and palm
greasing so our cities slowly morph into this.

It really sucks.

~~~
dentemple
> and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a
> two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review
> board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

Your complaint is that your new business has to not be a fire hazard or
completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

I get you on the fact that zoning laws can get pretty wonky, but these
requirements here seem pretty reasonable to me.

~~~
war1025
> completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

One of my favorite coffee shops is a little hole in the wall in the basement
or an old brick building.

Despite the fact that to get to the shop, you need to go down a narrow set of
exterior stairs, the owner was required to put in a wheel-chair accessible
bathroom. It's a small space and the bathroom is nearly as big as the seating
area.

It's an asinine requirement.

The owner looked into moving to a different spot a block away, which would
have been on the main level. He backed out of that when the city told him he
needed to install a grease trap to meet code. This despite the fact that
nothing he sold contained any sort of grease or oil that would make it down
the drain.

Zoning laws and HOAs are great in concept. But they tend to get taken over by
the Delores Umbridge [1] types who love nothing more than punishing people for
violating stupid rules.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Umbridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Umbridge)

~~~
djur
Zoning laws and HOAs really aren't great in concept, but they're also not the
same thing as disabled access laws and environmental regulations.

~~~
jmccaf
San Jose, CA had a streak of ADA torts that resulted in small businesses
closing shop : [https://sanjosespotlight.com/access-v-abuse-crema-coffee-
in-...](https://sanjosespotlight.com/access-v-abuse-crema-coffee-in-san-jose-
closes-due-to-ada-lawsuit/) [https://www.ktvu.com/news/times-up-san-jose-deli-
closing-its...](https://www.ktvu.com/news/times-up-san-jose-deli-closing-its-
doors-after-nearly-70-years)

~~~
ac29
FYI, Crema moved a few blocks away and is still open.

------
bartread
I think the fundamental error here is to think this is in any way a new
phenomenon. This line, in particular, holds the key:

> Others evolved over the centuries: Islamic architecture encompasses both
> Moorish horseshoe arches and the turquoise domes of Uzbekistan, but the
> unified features such as minarets and geometric ornaments _tell you these
> are lands conquered and converted by Muslim empires._

(Emphasis mine)

This architectural homogenisation has always happened to some extent except
that, in the past, its sphere of influence was limited to the area of a
certain empire, nation state, or religion. Nowadays the actors are powerful
corporations with global reach, and hence the homogenisation is global in
scope rather than more localised.

There may be a solution to this but I don't think calling for a preservation
of local architectural style and culture is it, because it's not dealing with
the root cause of the problem.

That may go back to valuing function over form and getting the most value for
money out of buildings, although neither do I think this is a complete
explanation.

~~~
lacker
That's a good point - in the past, when lands were conquered by the Muslim
empire, they started to share architectural style. Now, as more lands are
conquered by the international-corporate-capitalist empire, they too start to
share an architectural style ;-)

------
opwieurposiu
Building codes have made it extremely expensive and time consuming to build
anything other than cookie cutter boxes. Of course the code also reduces fire
danger and roof collapses are extremely rare now. The cost is uniqueness. Yet
another case where you can't get something for nothing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Building_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Building_Code)

~~~
samatman
And yet another case, I suspect, of the Pareto principle: 20% of regulations
are load-bearing. They keep lead out of our pipes, asbestos out of our
ceilings, and make electrical fires thankfully rare.

The remaining 80% all look good on paper (or they wouldn't be there) but do
things like require bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible, even if there's an
accessible bathroom two doors down, at a business which would be happy to
extend its use to any wheelchair-using customers. Or dictate ceiling heights
so that the occasional 2 meter tall customer won't hit his head on exposed
pipe.

But these regulations aren't optional "best practices", they have the same
weight as ones which prevent building collapse, fire, and cancer. And the sum
total is a landscape which is prohibitively hostile, in many cases, to
starting a small business.

~~~
secabeen
> do things like require bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible, even if
> there's an accessible bathroom two doors down, at a business which would be
> happy to extend its use to any wheelchair-using customers

This is not a scalable solution. Now does the business have to have the same
hours as your business? If not, what does the handicapped person do when they
have to use the restroom and it's not available? If we want disabled people to
be full members of our society, we just need to pay the costs of reasonable
accommodations to their needs.

~~~
samatman
1) the insistence that every regulation scale perfectly and apply in all cases
is the root of the problem

2) I did point out that each regulation, taken in isolation, looks like a good
idea: you're illustrating that with your objection

3) There will always be a gap between reasonable accommodation and perfect
accommodation, and what's reasonable is always subject to some debate: the
effect of this is to push the reasonable further out into the realm of the
unreasonable, in pursuit of the perfect

After all, no one wants to strand a wheelchair user with nowhere to pee.
Certainly I don't.

But no one, wheelchair or no, can enjoy a coffeeshop which never existed
because the starting costs were too high.

------
helen___keller
This is a little ranty so it's difficult at a skim to get the core arguments
of the author down

But the main call to action seems to be to preserve local culture,
architecture, and design, rather than letting the world become a homogenized
corporate sameness enforced by hegemonic powers.

A noble goal, but not one that's really actionable. The architectural sameness
spreads for the reason most architecture spreads, which is practicality.
Ultimately the people with deep pockets build and buy, and those people are
influenced by current trends and what is most practical (affordable and
featureful).

You can show me the most beautiful architecture in the world, and I'll show
you a builder creating a bastardized version of it with 30% more square feet.

The mcmansion with 30% more square feet makes the sale.

~~~
Spivak
Collective action, especially purchase preferences, are notoriously hard to
change but that's where the action comes from. The trend of putting every
dollar into square footage, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, didn't come from
nowhere. They are easily quantifiable metrics about a house that sorta-kinda-
if-you-squint give you an impression of livability and they're what every
house searching tool gives users to filter on and $/sq. ft is the most
prominently displayed metric for "value." Worse, even if _you_ don't care
about playing stupid games, you still likely have to play if you ever want to
sell your house.

Changing how we evaluate the quality of a house changes how they're built.

~~~
helen___keller
That's true. I've been looking at housing a lot because I'm hoping to buy next
spring, since my wife and I finally just finished saving enough for a down
payment.

I've started considering it a "smell", if you will, when a recently-
constructed single family home is in the range of 2800-3500 square feet.
Almost inevitably, I look at more detailed pictures on the floor plan and
layout and see all sorts of weird choices - a little "half office" right at
the top of the stairs not even in its own room (just like, an empty space).
Questionably shaped rooms that interact strangely with the roof. And so on.

Additionally, my personal preference is not even to have that much space - I'm
nearly content with 1000sqft for a family of 3, what could I do with 3 times
that much? - but I must confess that I do play the value-per-sqft game without
meaning to when I'm comparing a 1500 sqft against a 2000 sqft home.

~~~
Spivak
I'm in the same boat. Currently looking at houses but largely content with out
roughly 1100 sq ft two bedroom apartment for a family of tree. I wish I could
find houses where the layouts are as thoughtfully planned as our current
place. It's so frustrating to tour a house that's on paper twice the size but
manages to feel smaller. Like I can fit more stuff in the house but it's not
any more livable.

~~~
ksdale
My wife and I have always felt this way, we could fit our rather large family
in a _much_ smaller space if it was designed around the way we spend our days.

When we had 2 toddlers and an infant and went apartment searching, we kept
getting shoehorned into 3 bedroom apartments because of the size of our
family, but half the time, the apartments just traded space in the living room
for an extra bedroom, which we didn't really need because the kids spent all
of their time with us in the living room.

We often felt like we were being judged for not wanting more space for the
kids, when in reality we were trying to find the biggest common space we
could.

~~~
ryandrake
Square-footage-cram is a lot like feature-cram in software. We don't like to
do it, but it's unfortunately how we have to market to unsophisticated
"checkbox buyers" of product.

I would personally love a half-sized well-designed home with character and a
unique architecture that uses its area well. But, you have to pay an arm an a
leg for it. Unfortunately the budget market caters to buyers who limit their
home criteria to "price per square foot". So instead we get giant borg cube
houses built right up to the lot line.

------
lacker
About Apple's new headquarters:

 _Shaped like a spaceship, it also suggests to the local community, which
grants Apple huge tax breaks, that the company could take off and relocate
anywhere in the world, whenever it wants._

This seems precisely backwards. A massive, stylish new headquarters in
Cupertino makes it _harder_ for Apple to relocate anywhere else in the world,
and ties it more to the local community. Indeed, the fact that Apple HQ is in
Cupertino seems to define the essence of Cupertino more than anything else. I
feel like the author is distacted by appearances and ignoring the substance.

~~~
michaelcampbell
The point is the perception, not the reality.

~~~
philwelch
It’s particularly curious that they compare Apple Park with the Pentagon. It’s
a very similar design concept—arranging offices in a ring so as to maximize
efficiency. But while Apple Park’s “UFO” aesthetic has the implication that it
could take off at any second, the Pentagon was architecturally inspired by a
star fort, which has the complete opposite connotation—one builds a fort when
one is very determined to stay in the same place.

~~~
votepaunchy
Ironic then that the Pentagon was designed to be temporary.

"It was supposed to be temporary.

The Pentagon was the brainchild of Army Brig. Gen. Brehon B. Sommervell, who,
in the early 1940s, pitched it as a temporary solution to the then-War
Department's critical shortage of space as the threat of joining World War II
became imminent.

The plan was approved, and on Sept. 11, 1941, construction began. About 296
acres of land were designated for the building, which was supposed to be
turned into a hospital, office or warehouse once World War II was over."

[https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/18674...](https://www.defense.gov/Explore/Features/story/Article/1867440/pentagon-
history-7-big-things-to-know/)

------
dehrmann
I read another article a few years ago, I think also in The Atlantic, that
approached this from the angle of every coffee shop, hip restaurant, and,
importantly, Airbnb looking the same everywhere.

Isn't this just the result of globalization? As people travel more, won't
tastes naturally converge? And while I'll miss cities having their own
distinct flavor, I'm also not sure it's inherently bad that things look more
similar. What is bad is that the style and culture we're landing on is driven
by the class of people who bounce between world-class cities.

~~~
totablebanjo
Maybe this article was the one?
[https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-
aesthetic-...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-
global-minimalism-startup-gentrification)

------
amelius
_Everything_ feels the same now.

Websites, they all look like they used Bootstrap.

Smartphones, well they basically _are_ the same as everybody has the latest
iPhone.

Fashion. Everybody wears jeans.

~~~
Frost1x
I'm of the opinion that optimization is a natural enemy of variety and
diversity. Our businesses, economy, and more encroachingly, culture, are
dictated by the requirement for many to optimize on cost and ROI. As such, we
converge on all but a few well established optimized processes we essentially
copy and repeat. Occasionally "disruptive" strategies emerge and find a new,
better cost/ROI optimization solution.

Variety and diversity on the other hand need to be able to discard cost/ROI
focused optimization. They need to be inefficient/"wasteful", they need to
take time and more resources because they're new or their fundamental variance
that makes them appealing are defined by their very state of being sub-
optimal. They need to be able to fail and iterate, not fail and die.

I'm a proponent of optimizing on certain factors like cost, time, space and so
forth under certain conditions, but I think we need to stand back as humans
and be mindful of processes we seek to optimize and ask if some of them are
factors we _really_ want to optimize on. Do we want more square footage so we
can cram another person or piece of furniture in or do we want to change our
target optimization to include aesthetic appeal, variety, mental health... and
so forth. We have our priorities way off as a society, I'd argue, and those
priorities are being less of a choice and more of a mandate for many.

Right now we're on a runaway freight train across society to optimize on cost
and ignore everything else. This pandemic is sure to expedite that problem
with the economic toll its taken. That cost saving/ROI optimization strategy,
in our economic system, will "win" most times over other choices. If we are
able to relax the financial constraints of many, then we can use that slack to
focus on other factors that aren't always cost and profit driven.

~~~
randcraw
Doesn't that question simply devolve into, "How much more are you willing to
pay for variety and diversity?"

Shopping at boutique stores certainly offer a more memorable shopping
experience, better dining, or more engaging products than Amazon or Walmart,
but at substantially greater cost/risk. When efficiency/safety becomes primary
among your desiderata, variety and diversity will suffer.

This is the exact conundrum covered well in Kunstler's "The Geography of
Nowhere" which bemoaned the social cost arising from city/village design that
was optimized to serve too narrow a set of priorities, thereby eliminating
opportunity to experience and share common spaces in more than one way.

~~~
bluGill
Most "boutique" stores sell the same made in China junk as every other store.

------
doonesbury
This article explains why travel in a lot of the US (born and raised here) is
not interesting except for New Orleans and maybe Austin, or SF and Berkeley.
There's a despair here that I bet the French or Portuguese have a perfect word
for.

I hope old Europe doesn't fully go this way because it's my favorite place to
go. It's oldness is very soothing which is a sensibility or modality I got
from my father.

~~~
culopatin
I've traveled most of the US on wheels and I feel this. I have an intense urge
to take my oldest car on a long unplanned roadtrip just for the adventure of
doing it, but I never go because 'Where would I go? It's all an interstate and
a bunch of nothing new". Yes, there are small towns, but even through those
you have to drive 15hs to find something that stands out.

What they don't tell you in movies about the American roadtrip in a
convertible is that it's really long no matte where you go and really boring
for the most part.

~~~
robocat
I travelled using a 50cc motorbike from France to Istanbul.

Avoiding motorways was necessary, but it turned out to be an amazing
improvement. I now actively try to travel using just back roads and I try not
to be in a hurry to reach a destination. I now find travel is best done
slowly, unoptimally, via the less usual routes, and that the journey is often
the best part (especially when travelling with a good travel buddy).

------
jolesf
“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

~~~
blaser-waffle
"At least we're not Detroit!"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM)

------
Bedon292
Its interesting. I don't have experience with a large variety of cities, but
Seattle and DC I am quite familiar with. They do not feel the same to me at
all. Lots of history and monuments, and there are still pretty strict height
restrictions in DC. Just don't have any of that feel in Seattle. The primary
commonality is the horrible traffic. But, if you go to Bellevue and Tyson's
Corner they feel the same. Perhaps DC is unique? Perhaps I am biased to the
region I grew up in? How do other feel DC and Seattle compare?

~~~
Legogris
Can't speak of DC but I feel that even culturally, large cities have more in
common with each other than they do with the sparesly populated regions in
their own countries.

London, Paris, NYC, Tokyo, Seoul, KL, Singapore, Cape Town, Shanghai, Buenos
Aires... Same same but different.

~~~
KineticLensman
Rome is an exception to the others. The centre is low-rise and packed with
stunning ancient Roman buildings. Compared with, say, Milan. The suburbs are
much more similar, though.

~~~
UncleOxidant
Pretty sure that's legislated in Rome. Similar in Jerusalem.

~~~
kyuudou
Also DC - nothing can be higher than the Washington Monument in the district.

------
the-dude
Haven't read the article, but here in Europe I see more McDonalds, Starbucks,
Subways and UberEats in my own city as times goes by.

I hate it.

edit: I forgot the KFC and BurgerKing. WTF is Kentucky Fried Chicken doing in
the most northern city of NL?

~~~
blaser-waffle
COVID is gonna kill the small local joints. Large chains, or well-entrenched
local places are the only ones that will survive. Over time, they take over.

Post-COVID is going to look like a cyberpunk dystopia.

~~~
randcraw
Probably true, but will that dystopia persist indefinitely? I doubt it. Yes
many iconoclasts will lose their small business in the next year, but a couple
years thereafter I suspect new gainsayers will arise. They may be fewer or
farther flung geographically than before. But with some of the other likely
consequents of COVID like a long-term rise in remote work and less commuting,
more funky restaurants are likely to pop up in less expensive enclaves where
more of us prefer to live and can better afford to set up funky shops of our
own. It's still hard to predict the future.

~~~
bluGill
Business come and go. A city is resilient not because of the business but
because there is something.

Chains come and go too. Kmart used to be bigger than Walmart, now gone.

------
heydenberk
I'm less concerned with central business districts having the same
architectural form. That's clearly function following form to some extent;
people who work in those places want space and light, and as much of it as
possible in a small area. I'm more concerned about the Brooklyn-ification of
everything. Interior aesthetics, menu items, playlists, etc., are converging
in places like Saratoga Springs and Omaha in a way that really dulls the sense
of place you used to get traveling America.

------
bestouff
At least in Europe they don't. At all.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Even Europe has seen a great deal of architectural convergence. The Nordic
style, for example, spread from Finland to the surrounding countries, and if
one has known the Baltic countries since the 1990s, one marvels at how in the
post-Soviet era they have begun to converge architecturally, and in terms of
certain aspects of urban planning, towards the Nordic countries.

~~~
tokai
>The Nordic Style

Do you mean Nordic Classicism or Funkis?

~~~
Mediterraneo10
I mean Funkis and post-Funkis trends.

------
avocad
Here, in the Netherlands, towns get more similar. Mostly because all the shops
are part of the same big chains, with the same cheap building style, and the
same ways roads are upgraded. Cities all have their own history, so there is
more variation there.

------
dfxm12
There's so much more to how a city feels than its architecture.

Though I do agree that the International Style is a bit overdone.

------
QuesnayJr
If you think about it, it's a weird consumerist way to think about buildings
-- what's important about a building is why I, the tourist, thinks of it, and
not the people who have to use it every day. Most people don't spend their
time going from hotel to hotel not knowing where they are, so buildings aren't
built to keep those people from being bored.

~~~
Nasrudith
What is really consumerist about it is that it is the ultimate first world
problem in treating minor inconveniences as grand oppression and demanding the
world change how it operates alienated, smuggly alienated from the realities
of production and calling themselves enlightened for it.

Get a disgruntled real estate developer with a few drinks in them to lower
inhibitions and demand make less homogenous housing. Prepare for an
earsplitting rant about every last detail they need to go through from
economies of scale, cost of getting it, to building codes to zoning approval
processes and meetings as they lack and the utter presumptious cluelessness of
the demand from someone practically irrelevant to the whole process.

------
Markoff
no it doesn't, I fail to see how is Prague same as Beijing vs KL vs New Delhi
for instance unless you stay in CBD like author of this piece and I am pretty
sure it would feel very different also in Africa

------
sailfast
There are a lot of words in this article that are not really important to the
argument so it takes awhile to get to the actual less link-bait conclusion.

TL;DR: architecture is another means of control and we shouldn’t let corporate
architecture (headquarters) or current hegemonic / imperial designs take over
the local uniqueness because it is acceptable but instead embrace local
architecture. The article highlights some places under threat, and some good
examples and ends with a plea to avoid blotting our our current desirable
places that are unique with hegemonic buildings. [many many examples included]

------
ghaff
To the degree that there is a certain sameness, at least in the US, the other
thing that probably contributes is chain stores/restaurants. It's more
pronounced in some places than others but both urban shopping malls and places
on the street overlap a great deal from city to city.

~~~
bluGill
Our needs as humans are mostly the same, as are our wants. Thus chains to fill
the same needs the same way everywhere.

------
aaron695
Obviously it's the internet.

But the internet also allows one to go deeper into cities.

So at the moment we are still breaking even.

In part poverty helps keep things different, this to is disappearing. The
destruction of culture is an important part of progress.

This is seen as unfortunate for the viewers on the outside but swapping a
ramshackle house that floods for a brick box that works and access to
McDonald's is a godsend for the occupants. Pre internet it might have been a
local burger joint.

Now the (physical) Irish pub delivered in a shipping container has gone to a
(designed) shipping container Irish pub.

~~~
blaser-waffle
> The destruction of culture is an important part of progress.

You lost me here.

> This is seen as unfortunate for the viewers on the outside but swapping a
> ramshackle house that floods for a brick box that works and access to
> McDonald's is a godsend for the occupants.

Do some reading about all of the terrible things large fast food conglomerates
have done to our food supply. Cheap food is easy to get in places like India
-- rice and dahl for what would be pennies in USD -- and eradicating their
culture via McDicks benefits no one.

> Now the (physical) Irish pub delivered in a shipping container has gone to a
> (designed) shipping container Irish pub.

This sounds like all of the worst parts of Irish drinking culture, inside a
metal container, and without any of the things that make Irish pubs appealing,
such as old crackpot sods who've sat at the same stool for ~20+ years.

~~~
aaron695
> and eradicating their culture via McDicks benefits no one.

It's up to you, but when I stopped calling Microsoft M$ it allowed me to
mature a little in the software world and be able to critically look at
things. It sounds silly, but for me it worked.

[https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6185/is-m-for-
micro...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6185/is-m-for-microsoft-
allowed-considered-ok/6188)

------
exabrial
On the same note, why is every city council obsessed with attracting tourism?
For whatever reason it's seen as the holy grail of industry.

~~~
ForHackernews
It's relatively non-polluting and leads to growth in amenities that can also
be enjoyed by locals.

~~~
pessimizer
Middle-class tourist travel is responsible for something like 8% of greenhouse
gas emissions. Maybe you meant that it was locally non-polluting? That jet
fuel and gasoline burning doesn't pollute the tourist destinations much more
than everyplace else, although it pollutes more than almost anything else.

edit: changed 20% to 8%. Removed "IIRC."

[https://www.carbonbrief.org/tourism-responsible-for-8-of-
glo...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/tourism-responsible-for-8-of-global-
greenhouse-gas-emissions-study-finds)

~~~
ForHackernews
> That jet fuel and gasoline burning...

According to the article you linked:

> The rise is largely driven by an increased demand for goods and services –
> rather than air travel, the research finds.

But yes, as far as local job-creation goes, tourism is much more palatable
than heavy industry. Would you rather live near charming shops and restaurants
or a big factory?

~~~
philwelch
Would you rather work in a charming shop or restaurant as a minimum wage
service worker dealing with the public, or as a better-paid skilled worker in
a big factory?

~~~
ForHackernews
Doesn't matter to the city council. Homeowners pay property tax and vote in
local elections. Wage labor commutes in to do whatever jobs they can get.

~~~
philwelch
And without middle-class jobs, you don’t get any homeowners.

------
7ArcticSealz
Some time back I was looking at a commercial building/space for a personal
music studio which would be only for myself, not teaching etc. I was shocked
at the prices for even sub-par buildings. If you think homes are expensive,
buying a commercial space is even higher in major cities.

------
Wistar
From 2015. Crosscut: "The new Seattle, where everything looks the same"

[https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-
everythin...](https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everything-
looks-the-same)

------
lgeorget
Maybe part of that feeling is due to the perfect grids cities are laid out as
in America (North and South)? In Europe, roads look like they've been drawn by
throwing a game of Mikado on a map. It definitely gives them some character.
:-D

------
futureproofd
Aside from the article the main header collage is fantastic.

------
x87678r
Shops, restaurants, clothes virtually all the same too.

------
guyzero
"Now"?

People have been making this complaint since the 80's.

~~~
bluGill
In the 1980s they told me it goes back to the 1960s. It is safe to assume the
the grandkids of the first humans said much the same. And their grandparents
complained that kids these days dont know how to behave like they did when I
was a kid...

~~~
guyzero
Well this is more than a good-old-days argument. Highly homogenized
architecture nationwide really took off in the 80's as did the prevalence of
franchises and the consolidation of department and grocery stores.

------
arkanciscan
Every place feels the same because every place is the same place; Earth. I can
assure you that the only people who have even been to a different place have
no trouble remembering which place they are in.

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qubex
They don’t.

