I live in a small town that really loves being a small town. Willoughby is the kind of place that has heavy regulations about new construction. They don’t mind that it happens, but they are very particular about the way the buildings look. Historical integrity, according to them, must be maintained, and any new buildings must be in the style of the already existing structures. This has always seemed a bit ridiculous to me. I understand updating already existing historical buildings to keep their integrity, but new buildings made to look like old ones are almost never convincing.
To add to the complexity of my town’s urban planning, the downtown area sits on a riverbank. The immediate vicinity of the riverbed is prime space for restaurants. The idea with building restaurants on the river was to give diners a beautiful natural space to sit and eat. As more and more pseudo historical restaurants go up, however, restaurant-goers only get a small window into the natural, now surrounded by too many buildings all hoping to accomplish the same thing. In an effort to bring the natural world into the everyday my small town does the exact opposite. One restaurant on the river was enough. Now because there are so many, it seems as though there are none.
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