A sense of place

McMansions, malls and “big box” stores are making town after town generic. While media outlets continue to expand (on TV, online), Americans settle for the “safe bet” houses and we frequent retailers that could be anywhere in the country, including down the traffic-choked street in our own borough. Assuming this is just the way things are, we eagerly await our next destination vacation so we can get away from it all.

To give our eyes something interesting to see, my husband and I plan excursions to New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Amsterdam, Reykjavík (Blue Lagoon!), Napa, and day trips to locales that look like themselves and nowhere else. Desirable destinations offer a sense of discovery—seeing an old building restored to its former glory next to a new modern structure, reading a historic plaque (and not just because we are Sarah Vowel fans), people-watching from a park bench, wandering into a chocolate shop like Rose City in Boonton, having a microbrew at Krogh’s in Sparta, smoking a cigar at Ashes in Red Bank, buying an author-signed book in Ridgewood, getting a spa treatment at the Urban Muse in Denville. Yes, a terrific town provides interesting opportunities to part with our money.

Building a vibrant city takes planning, vision and political will. Unless the electorate demands pedestrian-scale, mixed-use neighborhoods—even new urbanism—politicians won’t use their power to provide us with smart, sustainable growth or other policies to make our towns special, livable places.