Or Market Street: "Don’t let your Main Street -- or any street -- turn in to a cartoon version of Main Street."

At least Nicolae wasn't hypocritical about it.

The following link probably is more applicable to Jeffersonville's emerging downtown building projects, but it's still worthy of note, for this phrase alone: "cartoon version."

As in, a cartoon version of downtown revitalization.

I'm waiting for a scholar somewhere to write the book about the way that a whole generation of Americans, maybe two, has mistaken Disney World for the Real World, with generic cookie-cutter plastic facades substituted for genuine essences -- and another whole generation of engineers and design "experts" making out like bandits.

When you look at HWC's plan for Market Street beautification, and witness the delighted reaction of City Hall functionaries to the merest mention of IKEA furniture, it's plain that none of it has to do with what makes New Albany unique and distinctive. It's almost like a disease, not a design.

Even the historic preservationists fall victim to this. They'll sacrifice their own credibility and lots of tax revenues to "save" the Reisz Building, then acquiesce without a murmur as HWC foists another faux street redesign on us, one that resembles what you'd expect to see at ... that's right, Disney World. 

The Kool-Aid is very strong, and evidently they're very weak. 

From McMansion to McMain Street, by Michael Huston (CNU)

Like the McMansion, the McMain Street attempts to mimic the complex roof massing of many buildings in a single building. Here are ideas on better ways to preserve or create Main Street character.

So, don’t let your Main Street—or any street—turn in to a cartoon version of Main Street! Planners and designers that want to preserve—or create—the character of the traditional Main Street should be more attentive as to the way this goal is achieved. Consider these tips:

• Whenever possible, develop with smaller lot increments (consider de-coupling parking to assist in this).
• If small increments are not possible, show restraint in the number of breaks and the way they are articulated (more up and down, and less in and out).
• Let hotels, banks, and other larger building types be expressed as single buildings with thoughtfully composed facades that more honestly reflect the true nature of the building type.
• Keep in mind that facade designs that are viewed only in 2-dimensional elevation form can be deceptively complex when viewed in 3-dimensions from the angle of the street and sidewalk.
• Postsript: A search for the term “McMain Street” turned up a similar definition in the Urban Dictionary as follows: “A new centrally planned shopping mall designed to look like a small town center but filled with big corporate chains.” In this article, the term is applied to any building that attempts to mimic multiple buildings within the structure of a single building.

The Residences at the Lofts at SoDoSoPa, or "Beware the Four-Letter Words of Vibrant Downtowns."

Gahan
Gatekeeper
Nawbany
Nash

GaGaNaNa -- be one of the beautiful peeples.

Beware the Four-Letter Words of Vibrant Downtowns, by Max Azzarello (Strong Towns)

 ... the most fun I have in such places is when I'm playing Vibrancy Bingo: The search for the four-letter words that inevitably advertise such luxury spaces. Whether they’re written on banners hanging from retro street lamps or projected onto impossibly clean sidewalks, you’re practically guaranteed to find some permutation of the words “Shop. Play. Dine. Stay.”, the rhythmic marketing mantra of the modern lifestyle center.

I think that it’s telling that for all the amenities offered, these lifestyle centers are so often interchangeable. From the four-letter words and impossibly attractive 30-somethings in ads, to the Cheesecake Factories and towering luxury condos, these developments are no more connected to the neighborhoods they inhabit than the strip malls and convention centers that came before them. It’s a modern twist on the suburban “geography of nowhere”.

(snip)

Perhaps surprisingly, a strong satire of these developments comes from South Park, a show that has consistently offered pointed societal critiques behind its trademark irreverent humor. In one multi-episode arc, the poor part of town is rebranded as SoDoSoPa (realtor-speak for “South of Downtown South Park”) and is heralded by town officials for providing necessary economic investment.

Faux commercials like this one take lifestyle centers to their absurd conclusion; The soothing narrator promises “A place to gather, a place to mingle with all economic classes, and now it’s a place to live," with both animated and live-action shots of pretty, well-heeled people enjoying the amenities. The running gag of the story arc is that the development is built surrounding the home of the town’s only poor residents (rebranded as “Historic Kenny’s House”). Though the ads promise economic diversity, the city’s poor are left completely out of its exclusive benefits.

While it may be difficult to take a cartoon best known for its fart jokes seriously, the show raises some important questions when it comes to luxury developments and lifestyle centers:

• Are these developments being driven first and foremost by the city’s residents, or do they come from outside investors with no connection to the place?
• What about the people who already live in the proposed development area? Do they have a say?
• Are such massive developments really in the best interest of the city’s residents, or do they find themselves swept up in the glitz of Adobe Illustrator mockups and four-letter words?
• What happens if the development fails? Is there another use that could take its place, or would it inevitably fall into disrepair?

Mapping Skopje's modernism inadvertently leads to a valuable lesson about New Albanian "set design."

Regular readers are familiar with my offbeat obsessions, among them the pros and cons of Modernist architecture. In this article, the architectural intersects with the European ... the Balkan, no less.

Big time sweet spot. Here's the link, followed by some background.

Mapping Skopje’s Modernism, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

An earthquake hit the city in July 1963, killing over 1,000 people and leaving 200,000 homeless. The inventive, vernacular-influenced designs behind the rebuild are worth celebrating.

Skopje, one of Europe’s lesser known capitals, is an unlikely battleground for an internationally debated architectural clash. In recent years, the capital of what is still (but may not for long be) called the Republic of Macedonia has developed some notoriety as the location of a new set of extremely bombastic, neo-historicist buildings and monuments that supposedly pay tribute to a hazy and heavily contested regional past. As a new publication points out, however, this steroidal historicism is only part of the city’s architectural story.

It wasn't until the summer of 2017, when viewing my long-lost slides from 1987, that I finally fathomed the intended pattern of those buildings I saw in Skopje. 

1987 European Summer: "Skopje, capital city of Macedonia, is a dream world for lovers of cosmic concrete communist-era architecture."

My visit to Skopje in 1987 was purely accidental, but it made a deep impression.

30 years ago today (May, 1987): Five days in Skopje with the greatest seismologist of them all.

Returning to O'Sullivan's essay, he references a phenomenon I've written about on a regular basis, wherein local governments eager to coordinate all aspects of construction and "beautification" projects in which they've chosen to initiate and/or partner (using public money), invariably prefer artificial design templates of dubious aesthetic value, ones more appropriate to the plasticity of Disney theme parks than varied urban settings.

Precisely, writes O'Sullivan; this same impulse has impelled Skopje's city fathers to construct grandiose replicas of buildings that never existed rather than honor their specific cultural legacy -- which even the detested Brutalists managed to do amid Communism after the earthquake.

Consequently, I've seldom seen it expressed better than O'Sullivan does in this passage. Replace his "Mussolini-era" with my "Disneyesque," and voila -- all my critiques of New Albanian government-imposed design flaws in a nutshell.

These new buildings seem less inspired by architecture than set design, an aspiration underlined by the government’s yen for recladding many modernist survivals with neoclassical details so that they look like housing projects dressed up as Mussolini-era stations for Halloween.

"Set design."

That's it.

Disneyfication ... "We define our worth not by our independence or our character but by the material standards set by capitalism—personal wealth, brands, status and career advancement."

Thursday, May 4 will be remembered as one of those auspicious "more power to the powerful" type of days, but of course local newspaper coverage centered on Star Wars Day and National Day of Prayer.

I'm betting that House members voting yesterday in their messianic hope of dismantling health care weren't even aware of the existence of children's holidays. Rather, they were engaged in adult pursuits -- nasty and vile pursuits, to be sure, but ones undertaken in the reasonable expectation that the Disneyfication of America would provide them sufficient cover.

This is a depressing article, though worth it for the "Disneyfication" coinage, selected for emphasis below.

Reign of Idiots, by Chris Hedges (Common Dreams)

Donald Trump. King of the horrifingly dumb and dangerously greedy.

... Magical thinking is not limited to the beliefs and practices of pre-modern cultures. It defines the ideology of capitalism. Quotas and projected sales can always be met. Profits can always be raised. Growth is inevitable. The impossible is always possible. Human societies, if they bow before the dictates of the marketplace, will be ushered into capitalist paradise. It is only a question of having the right attitude and the right technique. When capitalism thrives, we are assured, we thrive. The merging of the self with the capitalist collective has robbed us of our agency, creativity, capacity for self-reflection and moral autonomy. We define our worth not by our independence or our character but by the material standards set by capitalism—personal wealth, brands, status and career advancement. We are molded into a compliant and repressed collective. This mass conformity is characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian states. It is the Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes. And when magical thinking does not work, we are told, and often accept, that we are the problem. We must have more faith. We must envision what we want. We must try harder. The system is never to blame. We failed it. It did not fail us.