Homogenizing America
by Don Rittner

You may have noticed the landscape of your city and neighborhoods changing over the last few years. In our downtown, where once stood tall buildings in a cluster, with stores on the first floor, and people living above, now stands a single story office building with a huge parking lot. Active by day. Desolate by night.

Where there was once a neighborhood filled with families and traditions now lies a strip of fast food and other retail chains, dressed in their multicolored corporate identities, with all the style and splendor of a 70's disco dancer on LSD.

Where a single commercial or residential building once stood now stands a mini parking lot.

Even the corner mom & pop grocery store, pharmacy, clothing, restaurant, and music store are no longer owned or managed by a "local," or your neighbor. Those profits generated are all becoming part of the "chain," a corporate link that is nothing more than a line item on some balance sheet from MegaCorporation America.

No matter what city you drive through you can't help but notice that all of the corners are starting to look the same, filled with the same X, Y, or Z brand stores, taking your money and shipping it back to corporate headquarters in 'Somewhere Else,' USA.

It's getting so bad that you'll need a global positioning device to determine if you're in your own city, since all of the historic landmarks that differentiated your city from the next are being replaced with the same mundane vanilla boxes.

Welcome to the homogenization of America.

Now that most of the landscape in the outskirts of the urban core have been destroyed, many people are moving back into the cities. They realize now that the utopia they longed for in the suburbs didn't quite turn out so well. Their quarter acre lot, in developments named after the land, plants and animals they destroyed, didn't prevent crime, divorce, nor the other problems associated with being human.

The car culture with their 45 minute drive down the Northway to get to work, or return home, wasn't so much fun either. As these poor souls found out, all of the problems that forced people out of the cities had less to do with "where" they were. The problem was the growing narcissism and belief that the problems were all created by someone else, and that they could escape thinking they'd stay confined to the city. It took 30 years to realize "they," actually all of us, were the problem. It's tough to admit that being human has a down side.

A problem with returning to the city is that the 'X-surbans' are bringing that suburban mentality with them. Moreover, the corporate culture that fed them are following too. In effect they are attempting to suburbanize the city with its car culture and convenience life style. They fail to realize that urbanism is more vertical than horizontal.

In the past, when a national chain entered the city they usually purchased or rented an existing building and remodeled it for their use. If they built a new structure, it often would fit in with the surrounding architecture. W.T. Grant's (used the Quackenbush building on Third) and WoolWorth, are examples of both.

Today, developers force their corporate identity on us by tearing down our historic landmarks and replace them with prefab structures that are designed with architectural constipation - by software on a PC, instead of architects with design skills and sensibility. You may even wake up and find yourself living on Coka-Cola Boulevard, or Eckerd Way.

The resulting commercial structures are eyesores. They may look fine on Wolf Road but they stand out in communities such as ours like a sore thumb. Since these boxes are designed specifically for the needs of the developer, they are impossible to rent out when the chain fails and leaves, and, yes they WILL leave.

Just take a drive down Wolf Road, Central Avenue, or Latham Circle and you can see their abandoned buildings that didn't make it at those locations. They are tossed aside like orphans. It's corporate roadside litter.

Moreover, some of these corporate "neighbors" are not always the shining knights so portrayed in their commercials. Eckerd and Walgreen, two national drug companies, recently paid heavy fines for short-filling prescriptions.

In September last, Walgreen's agreed to pay $7.6 million and revamp its computer system to track and appropriately bill for partially filled prescriptions. This resolved claims with 25 states and Puerto Rico. Florida and Tennessee filed similar claims against Eckerd (owned by J.C. Penney). Tennessee settled its portion of the suit last year for $200,000. Not quite what I call community spirit.

And so, fellow Trojans, the lines are drawn. New developments are coming to Troy and a bright new commercial future can be had. But at what expense are you willing to pay? Ilium caveat!