America used to have dense bustling cities
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I grew up near a small city that had all those things. Department stores, paint stores, jewelers, several clothing stores etc.,. All owned by individuals. The downtown was beautiful and safe. Now I never go there because it's been totally trashed.
Can confirm. I grew up in a once-properous small town that was just as you describe. Today it's a ghost town.
I try to avoid dense cities as much as possible, but as I wander around the western states for the first time in three years, I've come to notice two things. 1). The densest places are either Dem controlled or getting that way (Phoenix) and the city planners are encouraging density with "affordable housing" because that cements their control and leads to the situation where one county controls a whole state. In this respect density is very, very bad. 2). There are many towns which have gone through a different kind of transition, e.g. Ely, NV; Salina, UT: Klamath Falls, OR. The original town center, which was small businesses, then larger ones, has collapsed and decayed and at best is a "historic center" and a whole new town has sprung up on one edge. In this situation the "nice" result is to spruce up the "historic" part, integrate it to the new town as a tourist attraction. Otherwise it becomes a slum, or is torn down for affordable housing (future sl7m).
easier to cheat in elections in dense cities.
You guys could be describing Filthadelphia.
This is the critical element here. Suburbanism is what has killed the bustling city center. People used to go into a city for their entertainment and such, but clever entrepreneurs brought those things out to where people actually lived; though these new businesses did so in strips and swaths (not centers) because there were no suburban centers to occupy. This encouraged the spread of franchises over individual businesses, and--once you had large chains--the chains could out-negotiate mom and pop stores on costs. Prices were lower, and, therefore, most Americans pursued low cost items and one-stop shopping over going to mulitiple mom and pop locations scattered around a metropolitan area.
The OP has missed the point that bustling cities may be something some people like, but others hate them. They are hardly a universal good in and of themselves. It is consumer choice that created shopping malls, then removed shopping malls from favor and created large chains and now is favoring online shopping over shopping at chains. This consumer choice is hardly the decline of a culture. But if it is, it is the world that WE have all created, not one political side or another.
Absolutely, look at all the shopping malls built from the late 60's and even into the 90's....all in suburbs where the people escaped to for a better life for themselves and better schools for their kids. Ain't rocket science.
That's not the only thing missing. They pulled up the trolly tracks at some point too and then replaced a whole block of buildings with a parking lot.
Yea talk about clean energy and less congestion. We had trolleys in so many cities eons ago. And they had to push urban sprawl and cars.
It was quite a sprawing web of locally controlled trolley networks. A person could get half-way across the country hopping from trolley to trolley until the automobile industry decided to lobby against them.
This exactly cities used to attract everyone to come downtown to shop, eat, see movies and work, it was safe. There were such unique things to see and do all of it, now it’s mainly gone, downtown Denver is a prime example.
Having been to Denver a couple times the thought each time was "this downtown would be so pleasant if one wasn't tripping over a homeless encampment every ten feet."
I grew up right outside Denver and left for a dirt road in Kansas in 2011
Best choice I ever made now that I see what my home state has become
I worked in the cash register building, after the 2020 riots it was horrible downtown was disgusting and looked like a war zone plus the libtards left it like that for weeks... took the former republican governor to shame Polis to clean up the capital. Guy is a total disgrace.
Because of climate change?
And racism.
And the faggotry, don't forget the faggotry.
Hard to forget the faggotry. It is everywhere.
politicians.
Yes, we used to have a lovely city. Clothing stores with high quality goods, wonderful department stores where you could get just about anything, except furniture. Great furniture stores elsewhere. Numerous movie theaters, toy stores, restaurants, Woolworths, with a long lunch counter where we ate on our shopping trips. We, as children, would "dress up" to go "downtown". No one wore shorts or any kind of casual clothes. Well, there actually weren't the tee shirts and sweatpants at that time. Or maybe athletes wore them in the gym. We would get our Easter "outfits" every year: New spring coat, dress, hat, patent leather shoes. The hats were obligatory, and very nice. Maybe covered in roses or like that. Then, when I left for college, a trip to a nice store where I got a whole new wardrobe of several sets of skirts and sweaters and some dresses. It carried me through four years, pretty much. There were no grocery stores. They were in the suburbs. Liquor stores were there. Wonderful mens' shops. My father was a model for the best one, since he was lean and pretty tall. and handsome. What would it be like to have that all back? A dream. No more crappy stuff from Target or Walmart. Just nice things. I hope when I die, if I can get to heaven, there will be a way to go back in time and see our past lives and where we lived. It was a far better time, Far, far, better. Especially morally. There was proper behavior and improper behavior and everyone knew what it was. Now, people don't even know what a sin is. Truly. Can you imagine not having any sense of what is wrong????? I believe we are in the end times. It is obvious to me.
Anyone who wants to can have it back. You can shop from places that charge more money for better quality goods. It is also possible for anyone to dress up instead of looking like a slob. People don't do these things because they don't want to.
I find it hard to imagine that the fact that most people here wear casual clothing most of the time and that they shop at Walmart constitutes the "end times". A quick perusal of the Book of Revelation will remind you that the "end times" are going to look a lot more apocalyptic than people having bad manners these days.
I would also wonder why you have developed the theological concept of time-viewing as a part of your heavenly reward? You ought to read C.S. Lewis. He would suggest that you won't be looking back in time at the corrupted earth and your personal interests but will be far too interested in the presence of God to care at all about those things. Elevating your childhood past into your theological conception of Paradise is probably idolatry, at best, and sacrilege at worst.
This is the story of evey dem run city. It's done intentionally to create propetual poverty and a voting block of people that you give free shit to and they will in turn vote for you.
Don't forget they give free shit back - even Steven!
Libtards destroy everything they touch.
They should have never closed the steel mills.
Wouldn’t have impacted cities, those created small townships, the right way to do it. Create small townships where everyone knows everyone and holds eachother accountable. Cities were the worst thing to happen to humanity.
"Wouldn’t have impacted cities."
It would have impacted Pittsburgh, bigly.
"Cities were the worst thing to happen to humanity."
No argument on that one.
I'm referring specifically to McKeesport, the city shown in the photos. It's just south of Pittsburgh. Closing down the steel industry absolutely impacted the city in a major way.
Destroyed Youngstown, OH, too. Of course the whole city council and mayor are Democrats now and we're kind of doomed to our fate until someone with balls runs and shakes things up.
You cannot possibly fuck things up as bad as it is here unless it's intentional. Terrible schools, terrible crime rate, terrible roads. You fix those things and businesses would actually want to come here
There's no excuse for a university town to be this messed up. If it were a nice place to live, you'd be able to keep those college graduates here, but they run as far away as physically possible because of the situation here right now
What a contrast.
Cancel welfare and watch the parasites learn to contribute.
I'm not to hopeful about that - more likely they riot and steal.
That's a bad kind of devolution.
I agree with previous comments about big box stores and malls with abundant parking. Also, the cities became dirty and dangerous as they allowed bums to sleep on sidewalks, druggies, homeless teens who were getting trafficked, In our liberal west coast city, it was always the bleeding heart Libs who “compassionately “ wanted everyone to think of programs to help them, which just grew the problem and never solved it. Death knell was when they started charging to park. Mom and Pop stores shut down within the year. Now it is mostly law offices and the like.
"In our liberal west coast city..."
Trust me, it happned in the Northeast, too.
We need to bring back our small business and return to the traditional architecture that made our countries beautiful.
I have a different take on this. I wonder if it is about hiding the actual population numbers. The left/cabal has been pushing the "over populated" nonsense since the beginning of the last century -- we know to them the goal of world pop of under 500,000,000. I have been leaning towards the thought that the population is in actual decline, especially in the first world countries. Take this post, check out Japans birth rate as another, completely abysmal, I read a paper saying that at it's current rate, Japan will not exist in it's current form in bout 185 yrs due to the drop in the trend of the current birthrate. China and it's Nixon/Kissinger induced 1 child policy, how many murdered b/c of that evil?
Count up how many people were lost between 1900 and 2000, from the wars, political insanity(dictators, etc), how many MILLIONS lost from the push of world wide abortion in first world nations(approx 62 million in the US alone, roughly 1/5 of our current population). Now add in the bullshit that is feminism, the push of single people to not marry or have kids. There is literally no possible way that given such a massive loss of life of the last century and this, and a refusal of people to have children that this planet is on the same projected growth rate that is always used as "proof" we need to slow down. It doesn't add up
Gotta ruin all the cities or else why would anyone rather live in virtual reality? The cities are clean and perfect, there.
The banks killed main street, it never really came back.
It takes creative city leaders to maintain a vibrant, bustling city over time because industry changes, conditions change. It will be especially true in the next couple decades since people have figured out they don't HAVE to live or be in cities with online work. Cities will now have to be places people WANT to be. This means they will have to consist of more than one economic driver and communist block high-rise apartment buildings. Graft minded Democrats are going to have an even harder time than they've already had running these places.