Over the seas a man was declaring his faith

Mass production of cars influenced the settlings of American cities already in the 1920s. Moses spiced it up by establishing Jones Beach, where summer guest could enter only by car, because the bridges on the parkways were built too low for buses - decidedly purposely. But it was not the first car-dependant affair. Country Club Plaza - the world's first out of town shopping center - accesible by car was already established. And that was just the beginning. After the World War Two mass suburbanization was haunting farmlands in the US. Thousands of square miles of farmland was turned into fileds of houses. Cheap long term housing and zoning were the keywords in fast & king-size suburbanization. Acoording to Gottdiener zoning was evident already in the 1700s in Boston, where gunpowder warehouse was moved away from the city center. Hall marks it with early 1880s in California. These two dates differ by 180 years, but it does not matter. What matters is that it is not a modern phenomenon! Zoning has been a peculiar character of cities for many centuries maybe even longer.
Next to zoning is important cheap housing in suburbanization process. In the 40s one family made history - The Levitts.
They built fast and plenty, due to standardized design, prefabricated components, new materials+tools, good marketing. People lined up to have a home in Levittown! People used to line up when they could get something that was rare -like hoses during the soviet times in Estonia. So why should not americans line up for a cheap american dream house! Levitts furfilled 82 000 people's desires. It is one of the clearest examples of housing as part of (mass)consumption.
But suburbs were mainly occupied by whites, who had all the necessary 'virtues' - shiner, car, white skin. This kind of radical 'migration' of people from the central cities to the peripheral areas transformed strongly the existing settlements. 'Hobgoblins' are according to Gottdiener: government programs, economic prosperity and failure in establishing the regional planning. All that led to unleashing the formation of Multi-centered Metropolitan Region.
Multi-centres are also 'multiforms'. Options are many - based on consumption, consumption, consumption, production, residential/recreational life. During the 1948 - 82 census used another term - Major Retail centers - to describe the situation, where consumption temples concentrated within city centers and suburban region centers. Overgrown consumerism has created more and more public space, but this space is rather worthless. According to EMORs survey about 77% of people love to shop in the big shopping centers. The continous line of 'The biggest...', 'The best supplied...', 'The cheapest prices...' labels puffed consumers holy places have become substitutes for streets (shopping streets), parks, cafes, cultural events, living, breathing spaces (multifunctionalshoppingcenter=stores+cafes+bars+restaurants+hairdressers+marts+spas+apartments+hotels+bus stations+cinemas+events like 'shopping night', 'Hullud päevad', 'Fashion shows', 'School market', 'Christmas market'...and it goes on and on). And it all is festooned with the reality that shopping places are accidentally, comfortably in the center of crossings of different places and streets.

Pasi Mäenpää asked in his performance in series of Urban Study and Action Lectures:' Has public space come to an end?'
Probably not, but it is in a fragile state, due to peoples choice based on reorganization/redefinition of public space. Altough consumerism has shaped the cities firmly since the first department stores were established (1904 Wertheims Department store in Berlin, the first in Europe), the situation has never been so drastic and worrisome. Maybe Chicago School was right all the way. Maybe city is afterall a product of human nature! And as Mäenpää interpreted Greetz and pointed out, the city as the public consumeristic space is the story we tell of ourselves to ourselves.
I hope all the exhausted, something special, extraordinary, remedial seeking self delusional souls will find peace!
But...
....before it all went so wrong a man - Ebenzer Howard was 'preaching' about peacful and human scale Garden Cities - the best of countryside and city combined togheter and Geddes was 'saving the world' on this side and on another side of the eastern hemisphere.
He had a figuered out the important feature of planning - the starting point - survey. And every surveyor has his instruments. Geddes had Outlook Tower! and a vision for anyplace - a local survey center. A center where anyone could observe different kind of relations, as he put it, 'relationship of Le Plays trilogy of Place-Work-Folk'. But Geddes and his ways of planning were judged and marked as causes of errors in national construction. However, positively stubborn Geddes kept on going. Now about 90 years later we have 'Outlook Towers' everywhere where ´modern´ living soul enters. Tough it has gone through metamorphosis due to the development of information technology and everday technolog, it still can be used partly as Geddes desired.