Very interesting piece. Speaking from the Australian perspective, I suspect that a fondness for the precar environment may also stem from it being associated with a time of aesthetic genuinity (that is, before so much architecture looks so artificial), and when businesses and shop fronts had an individualism, rather than the repetitious modernism we face. By that latter remark I mean, almost all new housing areas in Australia - regardless of location or socio-economic grouping - has a shopping area usually populated by the same franchised or large businesses. You could often take a photo of some places and it would have no dissimilarity to somewhere hundreds of kilometres away.
Very interesting piece. Speaking from the Australian perspective, I suspect that a fondness for the precar environment may also stem from it being associated with a time of aesthetic genuinity (that is, before so much architecture looks so artificial), and when businesses and shop fronts had an individualism, rather than the repetitious modernism we face. By that latter remark I mean, almost all new housing areas in Australia - regardless of location or socio-economic grouping - has a shopping area usually populated by the same franchised or large businesses. You could often take a photo of some places and it would have no dissimilarity to somewhere hundreds of kilometres away.