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In my town the trucks ever stopped in town. The downtown was mostly dead about 10 years before the bypass was put in, and 15 years before walmart arrived. Small town businesspeople were never that good at business. I remember simply putting a vending machine in the high school cafeteria caused the guy who owned the candy store to go out of business. A lot of "main street" businesses were niche and irrelevant to most people's day to day lives. Like the farm implement insurance office, or the print shop, or Army Navy surplus store, or baseball card store. They just happened to be downtown.
Over the weekend, I had some family business and I headed to my dad's hometown. With this visit I had a new lens. As kids, we never went to "downtown." Knowing how segregated my dad's town still is, I am sure it is a habit based on history more than anything. My dad's town has about 3000 residents. On this visit, I was driving through main street I noticed all the great historic buildings and an old art deco theater. It was like picture perfect Americana (with a bit of decay).
Not this place is so small, the downtown is only a few blocks. And this is a city with no industry and no wealth, so it isn't super well kept, it has a population of roughly 3000 that is in decline. But on the flip side. The nearest "city," the county seat, is about 30 miles away and has a whopping 10000 people. But there you can find the Walmart. And then tack on another 20 miles to get to a megaplex.
So main street is the game in town for miles. The next nearest town, I think it has a stop sign, but I could be wrong, has about 600 people. The other direction is the county seat, with 10k people.
Downtown Andrews has great bones, and pretty nice architecture. And I started to think, what on earth happened? Almost every small town in America had a main street that was similar. It felt unique, had character and served a variety of needs. And somehow, now, all of our shopping centers and strip malls could be anywhere USA. And smaller towns expect they'll need to travel in order to get to the daily necessities. We decided that the mall and the office park were the only place for commercial interests.
And it only took about 2 generations for it to happen.
Do similar size upstate NY towns feel very different in built form (obviously in culture)?
For the most part, I'd say that the towns up here are a little more dense. Here is a streetview of a community that is similar in size to my mom's hometown, but in the Syracuse area: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=baldw...124.56,,0,3.46
What is interesting is that both are the same in terms of land size(about 3 sq. miles), but Baldwinsville has about 2500 more people. So, on the residential level is where there is a difference.
OP, I have long found that any thread that begins "why" is begging the question. I do not think it is universally true that private schools are better than public schools.
Except "did we kill our main streets", if the answer were yes wouldn't answer why they were killed, it would be a different thread. In any case, we're left what the thread title is. Many posters don't frequent P&OC nor have any interest in doing so. As for this thread, I take it you're either trying to say:
1) Small town main street weren't killed off
2) Or you just don't like the thread title
Katiana, I could search the entire list of threads and probably find this myself but it's much faster to ask and dinner is ready. What is P&OC, please?
So, instead of asking 'why we killed main street", you think we should first prove that we did. Right? OK. We did! Or, how about asking how we killed main street. Now that sounds better. No? And, no, I am not nettling you. I see exactly what you are saying and it makes perfect sense. We end up answering those question anyway, don't we? How, why, when, etc., The journalism rules of writing taught by the best teacher I had from K through B.A. .
New Bern is a lot bigger, with 30k people, but my mom's community felt way more isolated from town than my dad's did, even though she lived like 7 miles out!
Last time I was over there is looked much the same, but development was catching up on one side of the community. No main street in here community, more like a corner store and a church served as the activity centers.
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