Villageonomics, or why many of our towns look increasingly like concrete blocks

I grew up in a tiny village in Germany at the Rhine and I remember clearly that, although the place had only about 3,500 citizens, we had three bakeries, a butcher, two supermarkets, a toy shop, a carpentry, and a tobacco house. Last time I visited, all of those rustic perculiarities seemed to have disappeared, or rather, they've been moved into shopping mall-like zones outside of town. This development piqued my curiosity, so I decided to explore the field and found a pattern: villageonomics.

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