While in Florida, I drove Route 193 to get to the apartment we had rented in Kissimee. Route 193, like Routes 22 and 10 in New Jersey and countless similar strips throughout the republic, is zoned for retail enterprise. Every available space is used for stores, parking lots, and enormous lit signs. Chain restaurants dominate the scenery. On Route 193 I didn't see a single bookstore, but shlock shops too numerous to count.
You drive along one of these roads when you need to psych yourself up for an anti-globalization rally or want to lose faith in capitalism. These highways are convenient only in the sense that the stores are clustered, but they offer only access to what is mass-produced, and all too often disposable. They are lit up loudly by neon, and you can't help but wonder if Marx imagined places like this when he conceived of alienation. It's my hope that this is one thing the world doesn't import from the US.
It's an architect's challenge, how to improve the aesthetics without wrecking the economics. Perhaps towns should put more thought into the zoning requirments.
Sent wirelessly from my Blackberry.
Recent Comments