Re:What Armenians should know about life in America (2014)
by carapace on Sunday April 05, 2020 @12:20PM
(#22786455)
Yeah, the weird thing about Lynnwood was that pretty much each piece of it, each house, most of the buildings, and even the national fast food chains, are nice! And there's tons of nature. There was a glorious bike/ped path near my house. But somehow the "macro-structure", if you will, is "atomized". By being spread out and organized as in-fill from the road grid you wind up with car culture and weirdly lifeless neighborhoods.
Otho: "We're dealing with negative entertainment potential. There's absolutely no organic flow through."
Delia: "I noticed that, too. It's like a giant ant farm."
I suppose they did prefer it that way. They voted with their dollars and they ended up with main drags that run for miles, filled with parking lots, strip malls, mega-stores, and fast food restaurants.
When I've gone back in the last couple of years, it's not quite as bad as it was in my memory. It still has the same nationally marketed conformity, but it is not as uncontested as it used to be. There are a lot of mom and pop ethnic restaurants, for one thing. It's not as uniformly crass as I remember.
I took a long, rambling walk while I was on a visit last year, and I was pleasantly surprised. Off the main roads, in the residential areas, it can actually be an interesting place. Maybe this is true of almost anywhere. Of course, it is all built for people to get in their cars and drive to the business districts.
Growing up wasn't all ${nationalBurgerChain} and car culture, though. My friends and I rode our bikes for miles, and anywhere we found woods or swamp we built forts and played make-believe games with D&D themes.