Sameness

As I was growing up there was no such thing as a craft beer. The idea of a good beer was either Special Export, or if you were lucky, Point Special. Today, craft brewers, and now craft distilleries are all the rage. Aging boomers have shifted tastes, and there also are the millennials who seem to think they have a birth right to all that is craft. Yet, this movement against sameness does not move to all eras of life. Take housing for example, cookie cutter subdivisions are still predominate, and of course big box stores still proliferate. Developers say such sameness is related to the market, and if that is the case, people are the market and they drive the sameness about which they complain. Visitors to Stillwater, MN, Cambridge, WI, or the small hamlets and burgs of Door County often describe the "small town feel,"nature and quaintness of those often old downtown areas.  However, when they go home they gravitate to the big box. Planners have developed their own set of acronyms, neologisms or portmanteaus to describe this move to sameness.

Big Boxes, Waukesha, WI (Source: Google maps)

There is the term Nullibiety, which is defined as the state of being nowhere. This term describes something opposite of a sense of place. Similarly, is Anyplace Syndrome, in which there is no sense of place, which means most any suburb or outer ring of a central city where post car culture subdivisions, big box development and the related strip malls make one location not very distinguishable from another. Store architecture and parking lot layout is so defined by some big boxes that any attempt by a city to create a unique pattern fails to the cry for economic development. We are, to use a more common term, creating vanilla places.

McMansion (Source: mcmansionhell.com)

Perhaps the most commonly understood neologisms arise with the first two letters being Mc, as in McDonald's.  This an obvious pejorative reference to McDonald’s fast-food restaurant chain. As ubiquitous as McDonald's chain now is, with its similar architecture and food, it has led to other derogatory terms to describe sameness. Most all have probably heard the term McMansion.  Coined in the 1980's to describe large houses lacking any architectural dignity or design coherence that predominate in the suburbs. Our design sense has taken a backseat to size, and architectural fashion trends. A more recently invented word is McPlace, which means a standardized place. This is what one sees in many developments from the late 1960’s on, which of course was taken to a whole new level in the 1990’s into the 2000’s by big box stores.  In the later part of that time frame what once were big boxes became medium boxes (or even small boxes) as the big box got even bigger in square footage.  When first coined a big box was about 50,000 to 80,000 sq ft.  Now the rectangular monster stores are often 2000,000 sq ft or more in area.  In creating a McPlace the nation is creating a blub—an indistinguishable suburb. Or, to use another term, a Suburbidity. Is Suburbidity, a combination of suburb and absurdity and suburb and stupidity?  Perhaps it is both. Generica, which is related to stores and strip malls you see are now more common than a McDonald's restaurant.  Generica, is a subset of Suburbidity, as it is only commercial, but does not deal with the predominant pre-fabricated metal sided industrial structures or the McMansions.  Layout of commercial areas, and even subdivisions show more similarity than dissimilarity.

Definition of Generica (Source: urbandictionary.com)

Started in 1940, the growth of McDonald’s has mirrored that of the nation. The company grew as the baby boom generation reached the teen years; it fed the boomers, and their young children (remember Beanie Babies handed out at McDonald's), and it now needs to turn to new products since its growth has apparently reached its apex.  In some locales, McDonald's will adjust their building and site plans, such as in Freeport, Maine, or even some small communities in up-state Wisconsin, to make it much more appealing to the local heritage. Yet, in most suburbs the powers that be are too scared to challenge and be seen as anti-development.  Hence, cookie cutter development is perpetuated. This occurs whether it is a McDonald's or Target, or a housing subdivision.

Big Box area Delafield, WI (Source: Google maps)

While there is really nothing bad about a Miller beer, as it is intended to meet a variety of tastes, the main issue with Generica is it is land extensive. Some day a person will be looking for that craft beer or whiskey and wonder why the cost is so high.  Part may well relate to the cost of the grains. One reason grain prices may increase could be how our land extensive sameness development pattern eats away at some of the nation's best farmland.  Production is moving to more marginal farmland. The market cannot make more arable land.