[ CYPHER CODE #822 ]
American life wasn’t redesigned for community. It was redesigned for efficiency, movement, and consumption.

[ CYPHER CODE #823 ]
Zoning laws didn’t just separate buildings. They separated living, working, shopping, and socializing into disconnected routines.

[ CYPHER CODE #824 ]
When the car became essential, public life became optional.

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Cut through the noise, the spin, and the propaganda.

[ CYPHER CODE #825 ]
Consumer convenience replaced shared space, and strip malls replaced town centers.

[ CYPHER CODE #826 ]
When every place serves the same brands, every place starts to feel the same.

BRIEFING

Jett here. Somewhere along the way, much of America stopped looking like a collection of places, with their own vibes and energy, and started looking like one repeating layout. Let’s get into it.

Notice how when you’re scrolling online and a random clip pops up, you can usually clock that it’s America within seconds. But what’s harder these days is figuring out where in the USA it is. Why? Well, because everywhere you go nowadays you see the same strip malls. The same gas station corners. The same Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, and Red Lobster cluster surrounded by a wide moat of asphalt. New Jersey or Tampa. Arizona or Ohio. Different zip codes, but you’re getting the identical experience.

Is that good or bad? You tell me. Familiarity is one thing, but being surrounded by the same tanning salons, chain restaurants, and big-box stores everywhere you go shouldn’t be comforting, right?

But we’ve become a nation of strip malls.

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But the sameness isn’t just cosmetic. It’s also structural. The same planning rules, zoning limits, and development incentives are shaping what gets built and what doesn’t. From how many homes can exist on a piece of land to where businesses are allowed to cluster, the US system rewards repetition and discourages anything that breaks the mold. And over time, that’s how entire regions start look alike.

Over the last century, living, working, shopping, and socializing were pulled apart and zoned into separate things. Cars became the default, and convenience became the priority. That “community feel” stopped being part of everyday life and turned into something you maybe could try and squeeze in between errands.

That’s how the suburbs were shaped. They’re built to move people efficiently between furniture shops, home improvement stores, restaurants, nail salons, and wherever else money gets spent. They were never designed for lingering, mingling, or forming personal human attachments. Sure, the system works incredibly well. It’s also why so much of the country now feels interchangeable.

Once you start noticing this pattern, you see it everywhere. It shapes how neighborhoods are laid out and dictates what gets built and what never does. The result is that Americans now spend more time alone in cars and less time crossing paths in shared spaces. And as one strip mall bleeds into the next, that sameness stops feeling accidental and starts feeling intentional.

Here’s how that sameness plays out on the ground: A property owner can have land and plans for his family but still have almost no say in how that land is actually used. For example, in most cases, one residence is allowed. Anything beyond that will trigger zoning rules, planning maps, and a convoluted approval process. The process is calm, procedural, and very final. Because this is how modern development control works. Uniformity is the goal.

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Once you realize how tightly individual property is controlled, the sameness you see everywhere else starts to really make sense. Because the rules don’t stop at backyards and acreage. They shape entire towns. What gets built, where it’s allowed to sit, and which kinds of businesses are allowed in the first place.

That’s why walking down Main Street USA now feels a little off. Almost nothing looks or feels unique. The roads are wide, the sidewalks are thin, and there’s rarely much reason to linger. But the real giveaway is in the storefronts. From town to town, the sameness remains. Same chains, signs, and layouts. These places are all designed to move people through transactions, not to invite them to stay and linger.

This shift happened because scale, credit, and zoning made sameness so much easier, cheaper, and safer than anything personal. Cute little local quirks gave way to predictable returns. Now, what used to feel like a unique town slowly morphed into a hallway you pass through on the way to your next errand.

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Walk down the Main Street of any city or town today and you might notice something off. It’s not that the roads are too wide (though they are), or that the sidewalks are too narrow (though they are, too), or even that there’s not much to walk towards (though this is usually true, as well). These are all known elements that North Americans have gotten used to in their streetscapes for nearly a century. It’s not even that what would be considered the Main Street for most communities isn’t actually a Main Street at all, but rather a stroad amidst sprawl — those highways masquerading as “commercial corridors”. None of these things would strike the casual observer as deviations from the status quo.

No. Look into the storefronts, or at their signs, and you’ll notice something else. Something that contributes to the sense of sameness, dullness, and overall lack of character that seems to be a near constant critique of contemporary places. They render our communities as spaces where we don’t particularly want to spend much time in, despite them being all that we have.

From neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city, Main Street to Main Stroad, these stores are all the same. The set of incentives that drives this sameness is prevalent in every community in America. It’s the story of how our basic needs have become corporatized through scale & credit, zoned to transactionalism, and rendered profoundly anti-human at the expense of the small businesses and idiosyncratic development patterns that lend character, diversity, community, and meaning to our places.

Scale Wins

Historically, the composition of a town’s Main Street was fairly consistent; All communities had a grocery store, a bank, a barber shop or salon, a few restaurants, and perhaps a dry goods store or boutique. But nearly every one of these stores was locally owned, so even if two towns had the same type of stores on paper, the character, personality, history, and complex interpersonal dynamics imbued into those places would have such a radically different impact that one could hardly say that either town was very much like the other at all.

This was essential to the cultivation of the imagined spirit of Main Street. The romanticized notion of a store clerk waving you down from along the way, a waitress knowing your order by heart (that just so happens to be the town’s specialty), or the counter worker at an ice cream parlor giving you an extra scoop just because you always come in. This, as the romanticism follows, is really only possible in the type of community that has the composition unique of a proper Main Street. Regardless of how true this notion was, it’s easy to imagine it being so in a place where the business owners and employees have a vested interest in the success of their own community.

these elements continue to exist through select small businesses & charming towns, they occupy a much diluted, and vastly different place in our society today than they once did. Same with our imagined spirits. No longer is our country one of small businesses and vibrant places, but insipid chains & dreary power centers. Our psyche has transformed from one of coming together as a community (regardless of its historical veracity), to a series of individualized, transactional relationships within placeless places, devoid of any personality. Scenarios like the one illustrated below are commonplace:

After work, one may drive a car from an isolated office park 15 minutes to the hypermarket for some batteries. Then, another 10 minutes to a fast-food drive-thru window, before finally ending the day fueling up at an international oil corporation’s pumps that have been been indiscriminately plopped down along a quasi-highway, only to do the same thing again the next day.

Once Main Streets were hollowed out, something had to fill the gap. Now, distance replaced density, and speed replaced proximity. This is when the car stopped being a tool and became the organizing force behind American daily life. Where you lived, where you worked, where you shopped, and how you got between them all started bending around the car.

Eventually, cities were pulled apart and rebuilt to accommodate that shift to the automobile. Cozy streetcars full of character disappeared, the roads got a lot wider, and highways cut through neighborhoods and stitched suburbs to strip malls and shopping centers miles away. They called this progress, but the more we built for cars, the more everything spread out, and the fewer chances there were to run into anyone unless you planned it or ended up in the same checkout line.

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Naturally, the comparison to Europe comes up a lot. Many European cities grew slowly, and long before cars dictated daily life. You can feel it in the layout. They have charming narrow streets, mixed-use neighborhoods, and public squares where people linger without needing a reason or a receipt.

But that kind of design comes with its own unique challenges. Those old European cities are harder to expand and much slower to modernize. But one thing they do is they keep daily life close together. Where you live, eat, and socialize is usually in the same few blocks, and that makes socializing part of your daily routine.

American cities went the other way. They spread outward, built wide, and let the car do the heavy lifting. That brought space, speed, and convenience. It also pulled everything apart. Home in one place. Work in another. Shopping somewhere else. Public life became something you drove to, not something you lived in.

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One of the most defining characteristics of European cities is their historical depth. Many European cities, such as Paris, Rome, and Barcelona, have been shaped by centuries of urban development. These cities were often built long before modern city planning practices were established, which gives them a distinctive layout — narrow streets, mixed-use neighborhoods, and a dense, walkable fabric.

The Good:
European city planners are often experts in preserving this historical character while integrating modern infrastructure. European cities are known for their human-scale design, where streets are narrow and walkable, public squares and parks are abundant, and mixed-use zoning (residential, commercial, and leisure spaces within the same neighborhood) fosters a vibrant and dynamic urban life. The focus on pedestrians and cycling over cars, particularly in city centers, promotes sustainability and livability.

The Bad:
However, the historical layout can also be restrictive. The ancient infrastructure wasn’t designed for the modern needs of transportation, sanitation, and energy use. In some cities, this has led to a “heritage bottleneck,” where it’s difficult to expand, modernize, or address contemporary challenges like traffic congestion or environmental sustainability. European cities often face challenges in retrofitting infrastructure without damaging historical landmarks, and zoning regulations can be more stringent, making new development projects more difficult and expensive.

American City Planning: Modern Expansion and Suburbanization

In contrast, American cities grew rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries, fueled by industrialization, mass migration, and a widespread preference for suburban sprawl. The design of American cities often emphasizes wider streets, car dependence, and more single-use zoning. Suburban sprawl, in particular, has been a dominant trend in U.S. urbanization, with many cities sprawling outward rather than growing upward.

The Good:
American city planners have a lot of flexibility to experiment with new design principles, particularly in newer cities or those that have undergone significant urban renewal projects. American cities tend to have more space to develop wide roads, large parking lots, and expansive highways. The American emphasis on the car has led to highly efficient road networks and suburban neighborhoods that appeal to many for their spaciousness and lower cost of living. Additionally, there’s more room for innovation in the layout of cities without the constraints of preserving historical sites.

The Bad:
The negative aspect of American city planning is that it often prioritizes automobiles over other modes of transportation. The dominance of car-centric design has resulted in sprawling cities with little to no emphasis on public transportation. As a result, American cities are notorious for their traffic congestion, air pollution, and dependence on fossil fuels. Suburban sprawl also leads to social fragmentation, where neighborhoods can become isolated, and walkability is sacrificed. Public spaces in many American cities are often designed with less attention to aesthetic or community-building values.

DEBRIEFING

Rules decide what can be built. Cars decide how far apart everything sits. Chains thrive because they fit neatly between both. But after a while, places stop growing organically and start repeating themselves.

None of this diminishes the comforts American life offers. Convenience, space, and mobility matter, and it’s great. But when daily life is designed around movement and transactions, those magical shared social experiences slowly fade away. Sure, you get everything you need, but there are fewer places that invite you to stay and linger.

So, that’s why so much of the country feels familiar in a way that doesn’t also feel personal.

NOW YOU KNOW

We didn’t design for community. We optimized for consumption.