The Great Devaluation

[Odin]

(03-10-2017, 03:01 PM)SomeGuy Wrote:

(03-10-2017, 02:56 PM)Odin Wrote:

(03-10-2017, 02:37 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Guh, Lakewood, WA had its city offices in a mall, too, at least they did when I was there in 2006.  That's so weird.

Here it was part of the same terrible wave of "urban renewal" in the 70s and 80s that lead to nearly all of the early 20th Century brick buildings in downtown Moorhead to get torn down and replaced by a blight of ghastly strip malls and "suburban commercial" type buildings. That same wave didn't happen on the Fargo side of the river so downtown Fargo still has its old brick buildings, the city actually plays up a bit of a 20s Jazz Age theme for downtown to fit with the historic Fargo Theater.

One of things that gives me hope is just how much of that pre-WWII urban infrastructure still survives, despite all of the late 20th century trends you mention, and how enthusiastically some of those areas are being revived even in not terribly progressive places.

The Fargo-Moorhead metro is a university city, which helps make it more progressive than it would otherwise be.