While there is value in the experience of eating pastries and a cappuccino in a cobblestone square, that's also largely continuing the experience of what one's

While there is value in the experience of eating pastries and a cappuccino in a cobblestone square, that's also largely continuing the experience of what one's forebears were doing 100 years ago. It's a melancholic stagnancy. And for me, it's very important to situate my own context within the present, and then, towards the future. To be living in the present that exists now and what it offers in it's fullest extent. That's why the experience of drinking coffee in a airport terminal and watching people from all across the world in many ways holds more value, because that's the experience that exists fully within the modern present day context. It didn't exist in the past, and won't in the future beyond "history". Well, it's not Atlanta the author should be comparing against, it should be Doha Airport, or Tokyo as the flagbearers of modernity. And there are many experiences there that Europe can't hope to replicate. There is no contender to Akihabara, no place similar to the level urban integration as Roppongi Hills, no comparison to the sheer density and diversity of food and experiences one can find there. The problem with America I feel funnily enough is the rejection of modernism (after the 2000s or so). Americans do venerate their history similar to Europeans, but their historical buildings are wooden colonial houses, a far cry from the monumental cities that the Europeans inherited. People in Asia and elsewhere don't do that, much of the old cities have been rebuilt from the ground up in glass, steel and concerete. Perhaps you might them soulless, but they're also far more covenient, far safer, far more comfortable, and that sets the foundation for new things to rise. If America decided to follow that again and build real, modern cities again with efficient metros and integrated malls, when combined with their individualism and freedom, such a place could very well be one of the greatest places to live.