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My sister lived in Daybreak, and one time I came to visit and ended up a half block shifted from her place. The house looked identical and I almost let myself into some random strangers house. I decided to knock at the last second and was quite surprised when a stranger answered.

It felt a little creepy, things were just a little too uniform.




I think in general, people seem to prefer character...at least some do. This is why people are so anti-sprawl, not just because of pollution and unwalkable-ness, etc, but because they lack character.

Even if you had a perfect, walkable, sustainable, 22nd century community with chi and all that, if it seems like Commune 2A, people won't be as crazy about it as say, a flat in NYC or a cobblestone street in Europe. Not that everyone can afford such places (I can't), but something near a sense of place probably is 80% of people's desires.


There was a fantastic Soviet film about this exact phenomena. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irony_of_Fate


Yes, super cool movie!

Had my wife translate it (while watching - me being German).

There are lots of nice movies from that time in the CCCP.

We are so saturated with american (popular) culture that it is quite refreshing to get into contact with Russian culture.


There is a famous romantic comedy from the Soviet Union (I forget the name) based in this premise- a drunk guy gets off an airplane in the wrong city, goes to "his" apartment (identical) and his key even fits the door so he enters. It turns out to be a woman's apartment and hijinks ensue

As noted in the article, we engineers love to plan solutions to problems but in reality people like randomness, cities that grew over time, and the illusion of choice


From the pictures, it's not my kind of town either --but to be fair, lots of tract housing is very uniform with slight color variation, sometimes.

I think they could have used some "reinterpretation" of Victorian, cape, colonial, etc... rather than replicate en-masse. But, like I said, lots of places are cookie cutter developments; it's not unique in that way.




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