Australian central cities are not like in the US. They never have been. The city centre is the place for things like this to exist. Here, suburban strip malls usually decline long before the CBD itself does (usually. With exceptions)...
It's funny, by every objective measure, it seems life truly was better, freer, more equal (like actually), and openly less hostile in the 1990s...
What do we have now that's better? "The internet"..? Not sure that's such a net positive. Social media? Definitely not a net positive. Smart phones? Absolutely detrimental to humanity.
No, give me simpler graphics, the occasional decent film/tv show, good music and actual good shit, in an actually still vaguely cohesive society, over anything we have today...
But "muh nostalgia", and muh "rose coloured glasses". Oh yeah? Well a lot of this shit I didn't even get to experience myself, but I think I can clearly say that it was better than the dying, festering, rotting corpse we call "the West" these days...
Today marks the day where the flagship tenant for which the above shopping centre was built ups stumps and abandons the place. It's become such a shadow of its former self (both the company and the the centre) that it's like a sad ghost.
But tell me again how things are "better" now. Yeah, I'm sure...
Our CBD's main hub is basically 2 short streets that are pedestrian only and a central courtyard in front of the main trainstation. The broader city extends out a bit, and incorporates 4 streets, and all the sideways connecting them. They moved half of the trainlines up away from that main area, dropped an ugly as fuck lump of green snot sculpture in front of the main station, and killed the main courtyard. There were a series of malls connecting the two main streets, these were always bustling, with one of them being a massive complex. The others were far more simple, just roads with 10 or so stores. But then the main central one started shutting down, trying to kick out existing tennents to put in 2 big box stores instead. But the contracts didn't allow them too, there were 3 or so holdouts. And so for the longest time the whole thing was dead, just a dead mall you walked through to get to the other one with a couple of holdout stores still there (good on em too, fuck the owners of that mall).
And the whole cbd now smells of piss.
It's somewhere you used to make a trip out of, families would travel down and go to the city centre. There's nothing there to visit now, and it's not safe.
Australian central cities are not like in the US. They never have been. The city centre is the place for things like this to exist. Here, suburban strip malls usually decline long before the CBD itself does (usually. With exceptions)...
It's funny, by every objective measure, it seems life truly was better, freer, more equal (like actually), and openly less hostile in the 1990s...
What do we have now that's better? "The internet"..? Not sure that's such a net positive. Social media? Definitely not a net positive. Smart phones? Absolutely detrimental to humanity.
No, give me simpler graphics, the occasional decent film/tv show, good music and actual good shit, in an actually still vaguely cohesive society, over anything we have today...
But "muh nostalgia", and muh "rose coloured glasses". Oh yeah? Well a lot of this shit I didn't even get to experience myself, but I think I can clearly say that it was better than the dying, festering, rotting corpse we call "the West" these days...
Today marks the day where the flagship tenant for which the above shopping centre was built ups stumps and abandons the place. It's become such a shadow of its former self (both the company and the the centre) that it's like a sad ghost.
But tell me again how things are "better" now. Yeah, I'm sure...
Same thing where I am basically.
Our CBD's main hub is basically 2 short streets that are pedestrian only and a central courtyard in front of the main trainstation. The broader city extends out a bit, and incorporates 4 streets, and all the sideways connecting them. They moved half of the trainlines up away from that main area, dropped an ugly as fuck lump of green snot sculpture in front of the main station, and killed the main courtyard. There were a series of malls connecting the two main streets, these were always bustling, with one of them being a massive complex. The others were far more simple, just roads with 10 or so stores. But then the main central one started shutting down, trying to kick out existing tennents to put in 2 big box stores instead. But the contracts didn't allow them too, there were 3 or so holdouts. And so for the longest time the whole thing was dead, just a dead mall you walked through to get to the other one with a couple of holdout stores still there (good on em too, fuck the owners of that mall).
And the whole cbd now smells of piss.
It's somewhere you used to make a trip out of, families would travel down and go to the city centre. There's nothing there to visit now, and it's not safe.
Ah Culcha's...
It's on the other side, but still...
That place gives me the creeps, even as a fellow Aus, lol.
And yeah, that area near the train station, even on the other side is just... Weird as shit.
They certainly mismanaged it!