I'm just here to vent, mostly about something aesthetic. I hate how commercial real estate is used in the US. I hate big box chain stores surrounded by parking lots the size of a small town. Malls are bad enough, but here's like a worse version of a Mall with even more parking and without even the courtesy of interior decor.
For those of y'all outside the US, imagine a giant parking lot and then like 10 stores all glued together and 1 giant one, usually something like a Best Buy or Kohls or whatever.
They're always the same thing too. I've been to 30 different states and they're everywhere. They're typically a very bland beige color. Maybe another color if you're lucky. They're ugly as hell. They're cluttered together randomly to ensure maximum parking space. They always look terrible and no regard is put into presentation at all. They're just the core features of American excess boiled down.
Drive car here, buy treats, leave.
They're such a waste of space and the only reason they exist is because malls were too slow at generating profit because too much walking is involved. I'm so mad at driving past a zillion of these no matter where in the country I go. I could be in Florida, California, South Carolina, Montana, doesn't matter. Same 10 things over and over. Kohls, Ross, Subway sammiches, gamestop, nail salon, Lens crafters, dentists (??), fucking emergency rooms sometimes (???). Yes let's put the emergency room right next to the Dick's Sporting Goods please
Can we please have architecture that either looks nice or performs better functions than just huge parking lots with consumer nonsense attached
Does anyone like these things
There are areas in Houston with competing commercial centers where literally a dozen are glued together, ramps and curbs separating them. The parking isn't even synced up or parallel sometimes, so it's all a mishmash of cars crammed together at odd angles.
Also I have to imagine these petty real estate tyrants get some lucrative deals on beige paint because they sure love that color.
Yeah! Like they often don't even connect their parking lots, no matter how close the little centers are. It's nuts.
If the traffic situation is bad enough because of the curb I just hop it in places like that. With extreme caution of course.
Yeah they really are everywhere. We have 'em here in Seattle. But I think the central problem is the roads. As long as everything's built around cars and roads and parking lots and urban sprawl those will continue to exist. Honestly I wonder if it would be best to embrace the Amazon-ification of retail and make most things online-only. Some stuff like shoe stores really do need to be in-person. And restaurants. But they obviously shouldn't exist as a rectangular monstrosity. I feel like the internet (and this may just be my terminally online self) has made so much physical stuff obsolete. I don't even know if communal recreational spaces are all that useful these days since you can actually meet people easier by at least organizing things online. Maybe urban areas should just be parks and restaurants? What do you do with 90% of the space? Maybe cities should get nature-fied. It would be interesting to make a 3d model or video game environment of an ideal city. Almost everything can be housing (with some mixed in office spaces) and green space and natural environments with the rest being secluded factories. 90% of the infrastructure in this country seems to exist just to exist. Seattle especially is insane because the space in between cities in the Greater Seattle Area is just spaghetti freeways. Tear it down and put in more light rail and special roads for shipping and call it a day. idk im not a city planner :shrug-outta-hecks:
If you look at any urban area in Google Maps from satellite, it looks like mold: fuzzy gray and white.
I was just looking at Moscow on Google Maps and it's so different. Moscow appears to be almost entirely apartments and green space.
I've tried explaining my aesthetic distaste for American commercial areas to everyday folk and the response is I usually come across as a lunatic. No one seems to share my displeasure, the endless strip malls on the sides of highways are just seen as natural.
America is designed to make us feel insane lol
I resent traveling in part for this reason. Everywhere is just a stale copy of everywhere else. Then again, I'm not sure if it would've been better before, I guess every town/city would've had the same sorts of businesses. Though at least they wouldn't be literally identical.
The car and its impact on society has been an unmitigated disaster.
Try going somewhere that's had less American influence and money over the past 50 years. I've been to Vietnam before and it's cool as hell.
i saw one building in china where they had a mall that looked almost exactly like it does in the usa but they also had residential buildings on top of the mall and around it. and there were many places like this supposedly in the city
like fuck imagine if you could just take an elevator and a short walk to get to the grocery store and buy some clothes or go out to eat or some shit. no cars needed, just people living their lives
When I was a kid I wanted to live in an arcology. One really big building that I knew every inch of, could hang out in any part of as it's all home, and had every aspect and necessary part of life contained within it. Grow food, live, work, eat, and relax in one really big communal space.
When I got older I realized I have been agoraphobic my entire life and just wanted to live in a place where all of the things I needed to access in order to exist were actually available to me without having to exit my safe zone.
for me i just absolutely hate cars. im afraid ill kill someone or be killed. one time i lost consciousness and kinda blipped out of existence for 10 seconds due to dissociation / ptsd. ended up hitting some farmer's fence. luckily when i dissociated i took my foot off the pedal so car was fine. went to the guys house knocked on the door and gave him a heads up and paid for repairs. wasnt even really expensive it was like 200 bucks
im basically really afraid to drive as a result because what if i was at an intersection or some shit when that happened? and ive done everything i can to minimize the risk (dont drive tired as that weakens my minds defenses vs ptsd, drink caffeine, have some music playing with a good bass beat, and talk to myself some). i try wherever possible to get remote jobs and stuff just because what if i have an off day and im afraid to drive, you know? cant ask everyone to ferry me around all the time, thats expensive or a tax on other peoples time
like if everyone was on bikes or something id be chill and ok with that cause everything is lower risk
Yeah, I get that. I used to be the type of person who would gleefully jump at the opportunity to take a transcontinental road trip by myself. Just genuinely enjoyed driving country roads and low volume interstates. It's been years since I've even been in a car at this point, and I don't think I'd ever want to drive again. Maybe off-road rally I suppose.
Yeah I hate cars too and I've had similar experiences. I've been overworked and stressed to the point of falling asleep while driving, or having severe panic attacks. I also have some kind of trauma regarding car maintenance, I'm always afraid my car is going to blow up or break down and I'll never financially recover. My father was always screaming at me to do daily maintenance and I couldn't handle the pressure.
I only drive to get to my job now.
see, we've got these by the name of "retail parks" in :ukkk: too, but with the bonus feature that most of them are in walkable urban areas. So you'll have a fairly pleasant walk there and then need to cross half a dozen roads just to travel the last 100m to the shop lmao
I’ve been alive long enough to see acres and acres of hedge get mulched, flattened and turned into more strip malls. It sucks.
I forget the exact federal law/loophole but it was passed in the 70s and let commercial real estate developers make a on malls and strip malls without bearing the risk or whatever. They would bulldoze a farm beside a highway, get paid to set up a mall, sell it to a dupe for a hefty profit. Something like that. This is why malls popped up and became so popular in the 80s. By the time people realized they're not very profitable, it was too late. People were stuck with these huge buildings and lots of commercial space that nobody wanted to rent. Malls were sold as these safe crime-free places to shop and hang out then when they started dying, it was blamed on crime. When really it was just everyone started moving online and nobody wanted to pay huge rents to cover the mall owner's poor business instincts.
The existence of urgent care centres in strip malls is one of the most dystopian aspects of America.
Actually, the existence of urgent care centres in general is dystopian as hell. That's what an ER is supposed to be for, holy shit!
I've lived in America my whole life and I'm not going to get used to the sight of an emergency facility nestled between a GameStop and a Pizza Hut
It's sincerely dystopian, putting a medical facility directly on the same level as consumer retail
Those urgent care centres suck too. They're literally worse versions of ERs and clinics based around the idea "what if we charge less for crappier and less service at more restrictive times" and because americans don't have healthcare, that's just proliferated across the country. It is the Walmart of healthcare, not actually a real emergency medical facility. They're basically sketchy walk-in clinics and they only ever have one doctor in the place who isn't there, so you're lucky to see a Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant, and are probably just gonna see an extremely overworked RN who doesn't give a shit about anything.
Enjoy a bit of Carlin on the subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41jCCyT5wuA
Does anyone like these things
Yeah, nearly everyone with terminal car brain because their world only revolves to a large part around parking and strip malls do have that shit nailed down.
And it doesn't register to them how much of a fucking ugly waste of space this is because they don't see cars any more than you see individual blades of grass.
It gets worse - https://slate.com/business/2019/02/dark-store-theory-big-box-stores-property-taxes.html
I knew there had to be something like this involved. These places are built so callously and look so terrible of course they were quick tax scams.
And they cause more to be built via “no competition!” Rules.
They are absolutely evil and do damage in every way possible, which is impressive in a way.
