McMain Streets, Gentrification, and the Futility of Authenticity as Urbanism Becomes Mainstream
This article was originally published on Medium, and is shared here with permission. All images for this piece were provided by the author, unless otherwise indicated.
Though the suburbs conjure idyllic images of the American dream, they don't come without shortfalls. Take it from me: I was born and raised in the fringe suburbs of southwest Florida. The nearest stores were over a mile away from my home, and anyone who dared take the trip by foot had to be alright with crossing a major six-lane road and forgoing a sidewalk for part of the way. And, of course, there was the constant scorching heat. Effectively, getting anywhere aside from a few friends’ houses required a car.
When I moved out for college, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to live in a walkable neighborhood. So I did exactly that—and guess what? I love it. I love walking places, having the option to use transit, and being able to run downstairs for a coffee. But as urbanism grows in cultural relevance, issues with the new ways cities are constructed are beginning to stick out. As a society, we need to reckon with what modern urbanism looks like and who gets to participate in it if we hope to keep enjoying it.
A few years ago, I stumbled upon an article by Michael Huston that first got me thinking about these issues. I think we’ve all seen a certain type of new development: entire blocks of mid-rise apartment buildings, sometimes looming over a floor of commercial real estate, popping up in trending areas of our city. They often aim to emulate the character of dense American main streets from architectural eras past.
Huston calls these developments “McMain Streets,” and what a perfect epithet. The name is a nod to the architectural fad of McMansions, single-family homes infamous for their superficial opulence. McMansions attempt to bring an upper-class feel to middle-class American housing, but to the trained eye, their construction is glaringly inauthentic.
McMain Streets, just like McMansions, can be cringey to look at once you understand what’s going on. The façade of one building will jut out, vary in height, switch from brick to wood panels, and so on, often resulting in an aesthetic blunder. That’s one thing I wholly agree with Huston on: McMain Streets are ugly. In their manufactured pursuit of main street charm, they don’t tend to succeed.
Example of a McMain Street building in Durham, North Carolina, located right across from the café where I’m writing this article.
But here’s a secret: That wonderful, relatively walkable neighborhood I now live in? By Huston’s definition, it’s a McMain Street. And yes, it’s ugly, but it’s functional. I think this is an important nuance that a lot of armchair urbanists (including myself) don’t consider enough—the difference between how cities appear and how they function.
For example, my apartment building features a massive parking structure. How it appears: space dedicated to cars in what should be a dense urban area. How it functions: a deterrent to taking my car on walkable trips (finding a spot is nightmarish) and a relatively condensed place to store my car in a city where it is necessary for me to have one (there’s no public transit route to get to my work).
This isn’t to say I disagree with Huston’s critiques. As an architect, he should definitely be concerned with aesthetics. I’m here to say that, from an urban planning perspective, there are bigger fish to fry.
Awareness of issues like car dependency and gentrification is becoming mainstream, especially among Gen Z. Vox recently produced a short documentary on YouTube defending what’s become known on TikTok as the “gentrification building”—a name that refers to McMain Street-type buildings that, according to posters, are displacing lower-income communities.
Screenshots of TikTok discourse about “gentrification buildings.” (Source: Vox.)
The video criticizes the recent mass condemnation of fauxthentic urban architecture. The reporter, Jerusalem Demsas, claims that these buildings are sometimes built to provide low-income housing, combatting the housing shortage rather than worsening it. While she cites some examples where this is definitely the case, the video skirts around examples where these new developments are marketed as luxury and priced as such.
Personally, I have never seen a gentrification building in the cities I’ve lived in that didn’t come at a high price tag. This is especially true in college towns in Florida. In the town where I live, low-income communities near the downtown area have even been bulldozed to make way for these profitable developments. So, how can those with socioeconomic disadvantages participate in the urban resurgence if they’re often forced out?
The Vox video emphasizes that as newer developments are built, rent in other areas of the city will become more affordable. While it’s good that housing is being built, it doesn’t sit quite right that it excludes many low-income individuals from an urban lifestyle. So, what’s the verdict? Are McMain Streets good for urbanism, or are they bad?
I think the answer is that they’ll just have to do. The planning mistakes of America past and the scars that urban renewal left on so many cities are, in some cases, permanent. For instance, have you seen images of Houston before and after the midcentury? Whole blocks were demolished for parking lots, leaving the city looking like it had been leveled by bombs.
Downtown Houston, 1982. (Source: Instagram / @landslides and @segregation_by_design.)
I’m happy that urbanism is becoming mainstream, and I’m grateful I get to participate in it. But I don’t think this conversation is over until our society can reckon with the injustices that urban development has brought and continues to bring to minority and low-income communities. What that will look like, I’m not sure. But for now, McMain Streets seem to be here to stay.
Alex Music is an undergraduate student at Florida State University studying Geography and Applied Mathematics. From a stint in a national laboratory to investigating local invasive plant species, her studies have taken her unexpected places. Her writing aims to explore the intersection of the human and natural worlds, spanning topics like climate resilience, cultural landscapes, ethics of technology, and more. You can find her portfolio here and follow her on Medium, Instagram, and Twitter.