Xeroxed Landscapes

Thomas Moore, one of my favorite writers and philosophers says the following about Place in his book The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life:

"A peculiarly modern way of violating a place is to construct homes and businesses without regard for traditional local forms of building and decorating. Some architect working in an abstract building on an abstract street comes up with an efficient plan, and then the plan is copied all over the world. In the 'Xeroxed' landscape, where all people and places look alike, we can't find our way, but worse, we have no signs indicating the spirits that give a place its soul. We patronize cloned restaurants and clothing stores, but the individual shop with an independent owner perhaps speaks more fully to the soul. If a place doesn't have its own spirit, we can't enter into dialogue with it, and so we treat it as a lifeless object, and it treats us, too, as an abstraction -- one customer among many, a subject, a number."