The Kansas City Crank

The meme going around w/ these pics was: “30 people getting coffee", which is catchy. But one of my primary concerns w/ endless sprawl is it makes drive throughs the only economically viable biz option for low margin goods, and thereby reduces everything to a purely economic/consumerist transaction (rather than loose neighborly interactions AND a coffee), plus makes the barrier to entry so high for small businesses, and the risk of failure so great, that National franchises thrive and locals never get a shot—the very people who make up our cities are reduced to consumers rather than citizens, creators, and members of coherent communities without a choice. It’s one thing off a highway to serve people in transit and moving between places. It’s another when we load our local communities with them. We keep doing things that make even casual interactions within a community/neighborhood incredibly difficult and rare. Those casual interactions act like glue; they are what make a community feel like a community. What happens when you get rid of all the glue? – at Oklahoma City, OK