Terramagne pays much more attention to growth cycles and opportunities, whereas local-America has largely forgotten about those factors. A typical mall there will have a range from a big space with rentable booths through kiosks and small slots, medium stores, and then the big anchors. This makes it easy for a single establishment to grow and change within the same general location, before it really needs to move out and set up a separate storefront. There are business incubators that work similarly, one in Rutledge has a bunch of poems about it now -- different sizes and styles of spaces that folks can use or rent. The business districts are designed similarly, mostly small-bet buildings, not a lot of giant subdivided ones, although ironically Hanson Hall is the latter type. It probably started life as a factory or something like that. Out in Eastbord there's a mall that now has some retail floor space in different sizes, an amenity floor, and various styles of small apartments. It uses the same model of supporting growth through different sizes of storefront, but its turnover is a lot higher due to its residents -- some things fail out fast, some grow fast.
Meanwhile in local-Earth, people are building wrong things, trying to sell or rent them wrong, and tearing down older buildings that actually did what people need. The result is a very difficult environment for starting any new business, propped up primarily by older building stock that is constantly diminishing. >_< Lots of depressing articles about that problem over on the Strong Towns site, but reading that stuff helped me know what to look for in trying to analyze why Terramagne-America works as well as it does, and the meaningful choices they have made which support those functions. Like, why is it when I'm writing, these characters never seem to walk more than a few blocks or wait more than a few minutes for a bus ride? Because their whole mass-transit system is much better funded and thus better developed. And that's part of why their towns aren't all broke, why people can start or shop from small businesses, that leads into lower unemployment because people have more options and resources, and so on.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2023-04-09 08:15 pm (UTC)Meanwhile in local-Earth, people are building wrong things, trying to sell or rent them wrong, and tearing down older buildings that actually did what people need. The result is a very difficult environment for starting any new business, propped up primarily by older building stock that is constantly diminishing. >_< Lots of depressing articles about that problem over on the Strong Towns site, but reading that stuff helped me know what to look for in trying to analyze why Terramagne-America works as well as it does, and the meaningful choices they have made which support those functions. Like, why is it when I'm writing, these characters never seem to walk more than a few blocks or wait more than a few minutes for a bus ride? Because their whole mass-transit system is much better funded and thus better developed. And that's part of why their towns aren't all broke, why people can start or shop from small businesses, that leads into lower unemployment because people have more options and resources, and so on.