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I can’t sympathise enough with the author (Ms. Ellmann's) description of my home city - where she also lives - as a destination. "Edinburgh, where I live, used

I can’t sympathise enough with the author (Ms. Ellmann's) description of my home city - where she also lives - as a destination. "Edinburgh, where I live, used to be a fine old mirthless town. Twenty-first century marketers have turned it into a fairground. Half the year the city’s few green spaces get trashed by Ferris Wheels, vomit, German Christmas markets, vomit, outdoor exhibitions and exhibitionists, vomit, coffee bars, beer tents, and ice-skating rinks.“ She captures the sentiment I’ve been mulling on recently: the city-as-theme-park. Once you take out the industry, possibly the finance (see Brexit) and nascent tech - what have you got left, apart from public sector? Is this a modern trend for our time? How many other cities around the world are increasingly dependent solely on travel and hospitality?

stevekemp 9y ago
I recently left Edinburgh, to relocate to Finland. Reading that made made sad, although I can also completely see what she meant. (I lived in Leith so most of the "stuff" there didn't affect me, except for all the tram-works, and the Mela/etc on Leith Links.)
ataturk 9y ago
A lot! Post-industrialism is a huge problem. Most of Upstate NY is one ghost town after another punctuated by art studios and phoney-baloney tourist towns with a "pedestrian mall" which is just a bricked over main street with some landscaping added. All for the benefit of the massive state workforce, I guess. Anyone who can escape has escaped. Imagine my surprise on going back to visit my elderly parents after an 8 year hiatus only to find that absolutely nothing had changed! Nothing. That's not to say all of NY is like that, but I'm astounded at how very little economy there really is in that whole region. The mega-city has killed the rest of that political boundary, killed it dead. It's sad what the US has become overall. We imagine sprawling futuristic cities and there's not a single one anywhere. Everywhere that isn't what I just described in some variation of bedroom community with endless strip malls and suburban blight and as you get closer to whatever city, then the urban blight takes over--mostly to do with trucking, warehouses, and so forth. There's little industry anywhere, just armies of people sitting behind computers while sipping coffee in climate-controlled offices. The 21st century is truly strange. What's also truly strange is that it is nearly impossible to get "off the beaten path" anywhere on the east coast. The Eastern US is unending sprawl beginning somewhere near the Maine border all the way to Miami. You can still get away in the Northwest, Montana, and the Dakotas and maybe also down the center of "Flyover Country" but that's about it. Okay, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is sufficiently remote, too.
- throwanem 9y ago
  Living in Baltimore, I've found there is a great deal "off the beaten path". You need only look for it. And, having found it, don't put it on Instagram.
lmm 9y ago
What else is the world for? Cities, along with everything else, exist to satisfy human 1) needs 2) wants. With 1) getting increasingly cheap, most of the effort is being spent on 2).
- kiliantics 9y ago
  Most people don't want these bullshit consumer funfairs though. It's just that the people with the money are somehow convinced to want them and that's why we get them.
  - lmm 9y ago
    I think that's the opposite of true. I think most of these consumer things succeed because people actually enjoy them, but articles like this pretend to hate anything popular/mainstream because that's the socially respectable thing to do.
    - thrav 9y ago
      Yep. Because they’re ok-awesome in small doses, and that’s all anyone traveling will ever taste.
    - kiliantics 9y ago
      I grew up in an area that catered to tourists and there was so much public spending put towards attractions for tourists that had no utility for locals while many useful services were neglected. I think this is a large part of the argument behind the article - that locals are losing out because the rich travelers need to be catered to - and I think it's a pretty legitimate one.

stevekemp 9y ago

I recently left Edinburgh, to relocate to Finland. Reading that made made sad, although I can also completely see what she meant. (I lived in Leith so most of the "stuff" there didn't affect me, except for all the tram-works, and the Mela/etc on Leith Links.)

ataturk 9y ago

A lot! Post-industrialism is a huge problem. Most of Upstate NY is one ghost town after another punctuated by art studios and phoney-baloney tourist towns with a "pedestrian mall" which is just a bricked over main street with some landscaping added. All for the benefit of the massive state workforce, I guess. Anyone who can escape has escaped. Imagine my surprise on going back to visit my elderly parents after an 8 year hiatus only to find that absolutely nothing had changed! Nothing. That's not to say all of NY is like that, but I'm astounded at how very little economy there really is in that whole region. The mega-city has killed the rest of that political boundary, killed it dead. It's sad what the US has become overall. We imagine sprawling futuristic cities and there's not a single one anywhere. Everywhere that isn't what I just described in some variation of bedroom community with endless strip malls and suburban blight and as you get closer to whatever city, then the urban blight takes over--mostly to do with trucking, warehouses, and so forth. There's little industry anywhere, just armies of people sitting behind computers while sipping coffee in climate-controlled offices. The 21st century is truly strange. What's also truly strange is that it is nearly impossible to get "off the beaten path" anywhere on the east coast. The Eastern US is unending sprawl beginning somewhere near the Maine border all the way to Miami. You can still get away in the Northwest, Montana, and the Dakotas and maybe also down the center of "Flyover Country" but that's about it. Okay, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is sufficiently remote, too.

throwanem 9y ago
Living in Baltimore, I've found there is a great deal "off the beaten path". You need only look for it. And, having found it, don't put it on Instagram.

lmm 9y ago

What else is the world for? Cities, along with everything else, exist to satisfy human 1) needs 2) wants. With 1) getting increasingly cheap, most of the effort is being spent on 2).

kiliantics 9y ago
Most people don't want these bullshit consumer funfairs though. It's just that the people with the money are somehow convinced to want them and that's why we get them.
- lmm 9y ago
  I think that's the opposite of true. I think most of these consumer things succeed because people actually enjoy them, but articles like this pretend to hate anything popular/mainstream because that's the socially respectable thing to do.
  - thrav 9y ago
    Yep. Because they’re ok-awesome in small doses, and that’s all anyone traveling will ever taste.
  - kiliantics 9y ago
    I grew up in an area that catered to tourists and there was so much public spending put towards attractions for tourists that had no utility for locals while many useful services were neglected. I think this is a large part of the argument behind the article - that locals are losing out because the rich travelers need to be catered to - and I think it's a pretty legitimate one.