Comments by "" (@kaitlyn__L) on "I DESTROYED a European City with U.S. Planning (in Townscaper)" video.
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The part about malls was kind of trippy to listen to, because there's always been (semi)covered markets called malls in the middle of cities accessed on foot. In Europe anyway (eg Covent Garden Market).
I had to keep telling myself to add-in "motor oriented" at the start, since it was really a reinterpretation of the concept, how to get people to drive there when they could no longer easily walk to it from their home or place of work. Of course it had to be much bigger and offer far more choice to justify the distance, since it would be the only one nearby rather than just one of many in a city centre.
And indeed in many European cities and towns these locales were never demolished, and merely had lots combined by newer business tenants who installed miniature versions of their stores much like you'd otherwise see in an American mall.
Of course some of them now have underground or multi-storey parking somewhere near, some of those with pretty crazy-distant elevated walkways from the parking to the historical locale, but a lot are still purely designed to be accessed from the street level.
I suppose a Strip Mall is the motor-oriented reimagining of... just a regular uncovered shopping street? Like Oxford Street, or Buchanan Street. Except instead of a wide pedestrian boulevard/limited-traffic street, it's car parks.
That stuff about exurbia was pretty depressing too. It still looked so... dead from overhead. I'm sure there's places like that here too, but almost everyone I know who prefers a rural lifestyle rents a farm house here. So, instead of just being separated by giant lawns, they're separated by actual farms, grazing fields with animals, small grain warehouses, and forests. And you actually are a mile away from anyone else, instead of just what looks like half a street's distance hastily camouflaged with a few trees on the property line.
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