Placeless Sprawl With Names Evoking A Sense of Place
While vacationing in Seattle I visited Seattle’s oldest area, known as Pioneer Square.
The above is obviously not a late 19th Century historic area in downtown Seattle. Instead it is a typical highway side auto-centric center located an hour or so North of Seattle near I-5 (map added on 3/27/09). But the horse graphic on the sign gives you that pioneer feeling…
The real Pioneer Square has character and no gas pumps. I always find it interesting the names given to characterless sprawl. Does a familiar name on a cheap backlit sign make sprawl more ascceptable?
In the St. Louis region we see the Arch invoked all over . Does that give these meaningless areas a sense of place? Hardly.
One of my favorites is the Eureka Towne Center:
In the sense of pure commerce the above is the center of Eureka, MO with a Wal-Mart and a host of chain stores. Sad on so many levels. Sad that Main Street is no longer valued. Sad that sprawl like this exists from coast to coast. Sad that the public has fully accepted this form of developmemt. Sad that few see the folly of calling it the “towne center.”
We have real places in America but for the last half century we’ve become so accustomed to sprawl. Those of us who abhore sprawl are then left to retreat to the remaining authentic places for living in sprawl is no life at all.
My favorites are places like “Shadow Ridge Road” in a crap subdivision adjacent to an Interstate.
When I saw that aerial photograph, I thought it looked familiar! I actually work in the building behind the Eureka Towne Center. If you look close – real close – you can see my car! 🙂
It’s too bad about Eureka’s heart of commerce being the WalMart, since the city actually has a very nice, quaint little main street in the “Old Town” section. There are several nice restaurants and shops that seem to do brisk business at lunch time.
Thanks for the post!
Right on Steve – could not have said it better. Why do we continue to build like this?
Easy – it’s simply become way too easy for local government to rely on sales taxes instead of property taxes or other taxes. One, it’s easy (and accurate) to assume that the majority of people paying the sales tax will be non-residents, and thus, non-voters, especially around St. Louis County, and two, since it comes at you a little bit every day, you get numb to forking over 8% – 10% of every purchase to the government. In contrast, property taxes are paid by most every constituent and they each get a big, annual bill to remind them how much government is really costing them!
And in a classic case of sales taxes running amok, don’t buy a beer in Rogers, Arkansas, unless you like paying a 24%(!) sales tax on it – apparently it’s the result of a county conflicted between attracting chain restaurants and expanding their urban sprawl and their bible-belt past as a dry county. They really don’t want to allow liquor-by-the-drink sales, but if/since they’re forced to, they’re gonna make those sinners pay!
Funny you mentioned Eureka.
One of the things that I think is totally inappropriate for an urban environment, and I don’t even like them in suburban or rural areas, are exceedingly tall poles near freeway exits with the logo of the restaurant, gas station or hotel whose property it is on. Thankfully, St. Louis City has very few of them.
The worst example IMHO is I-24’s exit at US 79 in Clarksville, Tennessee. There must be five dozen 100-foot or taller poles for restaurants, hotels and gas stations.
Interstate highways and many other non-interstate divided highways have the blue signs near exits showing which food, gas and lodging there are at the exit. Therefore, those exceedingly tall poles are not necessary.
Your mention of Eureka brought back some memories in that regard — when I was younger, I had frequent trips on that stretch of 44 between 109 and Six Flags that you show above. If it wasn’t for Six Flags itself, it was for relatives in Franklin County, field trips there, and other things. In those days, the McDonalds and the Burger King in Eureka were very close to each other on 5th Street (N Outer Rd). Every time I passed by there, it seems like the polls for McDs and BK were going higher and higher and higher, as if they were in competition with each other to have the highest pole.
It might just be me.
John Norquist, former mayor of Milwaukee and current president of the Congress for New Urbanism, said that these places often are named after what was destroyed by the sprawl — for example “Deer Meadows.”
I think Kunstler may have said that first…
I don’t buy into the implication that to live in Eureka is “unnatural”. Back when Forest Park was created most people thought that it was too far away from the city. This provides a glimpse of the contrast between views that current city dwellers maintain related to the scale of the city versus the prevailing views of old time city residents. Prior to the advent of the modern auto and suitable roads it would seem unatural to live in the county and commute to the city every day. This is not the case anymore.