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> To him, Albi’s fate was a cultural misfortune. City leaders had poured money into a high-concept modernistic new culture center at the town’s edge. And the sh

> To him, Albi’s fate was a cultural misfortune. City leaders had poured money into a high-concept modernistic new culture center at the town’s edge. And the shopping mall had been built. Large grocery chains, called hypermarkets, had also been constructed outside the city, with free parking. It is not that Albi no longer had commerce, or activity. But the essence of the ancient city was being lost. In other words, the same car-centered development afflictions as elsewhere, and the same "strong towns" reforms needed.

wott 10y ago
Yes. The thing is that France used to have perhaps the best balance in human-shaped landscapes in the world. A mix of villages, small towns and mid-sized cities spread rather evenly across the whole land, that made its charm. And that was butchered like nowhere else. The city entrances are a nightmare of uglyness. All cities, all towns, even big villages suffer from the same plague. Roads bordered by commercial areas filled with the cheapest shoebox building possible, dirty parking-lots, anarchic advertisements. http://i.f1g.fr/media/ext/orig/www.lefigaro.fr/medias/2014/07/14/PHO61015ea2-0b42-11e4-bc9d-f56ed247f9da-805x453.jpg http://i.f1g.fr/media/ext/orig/www.lefigaro.fr/medias/2014/0... http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2010/02/media_52457/comment-la-france-est-devenue-moche,M33458.jpg http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2010/02/media_52457/comment... And you can use Streetview around any town-centre and get the same kind of horror along the main roads for kilometres. That was the first effect: aesthetics; it spread since the 80's. And now the second effect, the functional one, has been kicking in in the last 10 years: now not only villages are deprived from the shops there used to be, but every city except the largest metropolises suffer the same fate. It is France who invented, developed and exported the concept of 'hypermarkets'. In the 80's, we had one near Toulouse (city which had not yet grown like the city it is now), in what used to be countryside, that was the largest in Europe, and I believe in the world. People would drive there on Saturday from 100, 150 km away.

wott 10y ago

Yes. The thing is that France used to have perhaps the best balance in human-shaped landscapes in the world. A mix of villages, small towns and mid-sized cities spread rather evenly across the whole land, that made its charm. And that was butchered like nowhere else. The city entrances are a nightmare of uglyness. All cities, all towns, even big villages suffer from the same plague. Roads bordered by commercial areas filled with the cheapest shoebox building possible, dirty parking-lots, anarchic advertisements. http://i.f1g.fr/media/ext/orig/www.lefigaro.fr/medias/2014/07/14/PHO61015ea2-0b42-11e4-bc9d-f56ed247f9da-805x453.jpg http://i.f1g.fr/media/ext/orig/www.lefigaro.fr/medias/2014/0... http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2010/02/media_52457/comment-la-france-est-devenue-moche,M33458.jpg http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2010/02/media_52457/comment... And you can use Streetview around any town-centre and get the same kind of horror along the main roads for kilometres. That was the first effect: aesthetics; it spread since the 80's. And now the second effect, the functional one, has been kicking in in the last 10 years: now not only villages are deprived from the shops there used to be, but every city except the largest metropolises suffer the same fate. It is France who invented, developed and exported the concept of 'hypermarkets'. In the 80's, we had one near Toulouse (city which had not yet grown like the city it is now), in what used to be countryside, that was the largest in Europe, and I believe in the world. People would drive there on Saturday from 100, 150 km away.