I’m back in the states for holidays but this time it was such a shock to realize everything looks so old, like from the airport to the convenience stores, malls, gas stations, etc. Why does everything look like it hasn’t changed from the 90s? And I was out just for a couple of months but things look newer and shinier in Panama and El Salvador compared to here. I cannot even imagine what some of you coming back from east Asia must feel. Did our country peak in the 90s and other countries are going through their renaissance? I love the convenience of the US where everything is open 24 hrs and you can get things delivered to your door basically overnight if you pay the price but I feel like we’re stuck with very old and boring infrastructure, makes me feel almost the same way I felt when I went to eastern Europe
Well you definitely aren’t wrong, but it’s a pretty simple situation.
American taxes seem to go everywhere except for upgrading critical infrastructure and then on the private sector side of things there are components like greed and economic factors like ROI that might prevent spending money on updating the buildings and architecture.
America seemed to build so much of our nations current physical appearance in the 50’s with what appears to have been a pure focus on greed and rapid expansionist policies.
The creation of the modern suburban scheme and inadequate city planning that have left us with the American version of villages (far different than the European towns and villages).
These days the only opportunity for American architecture to be done modern, shiny, and new is when sufficient population and demand bleed over into new areas and either allow for completely new buildings and businesses…or via growth and maturation in existing towns, cities, and villages that fosters sufficient investment to replace existing buildings with modern new ones, at a huge cost. You can find evidence all over in every state, both of the old ugly that you mentioned (sucks for all of us), and also some of the shiny new attractive modern buildings.
There’s also a third category where we have well preserved and intentionally old historic architecture, like New Orleans or Savannah, in both you can find great examples of updated modern /historical buildings, which is quite beautiful to see, right along side truly old historic stuff.