Mikeology

For $400 per night, the Newport Harbor Hotel and Marina offers exclusive, uncongested waterfront access …

… and unequalled views of the sparkling sea at sunset…

If harbor fog and rush-hour yachting are not worth a premium price to you, then for $179 per night, the Hampton Inn in suburban South Kingstown will lure your sleepy body:

It offers a misty view of a newly built “lifestyle center” whose Main Street hosts developer-approved chain stores, developer-approved condos, a family cineplex — and prefab cafes and minimarts that stay open all night. All built atop bulldozed trees and arable land.

At least this place is honest: The streets of this little village are named in accordance with the lifestyle center’s marketing identity. So many developments use street names that conjure images of the evergreens, flora, and fauna that were razed. So street names like “South County Commons Way” and “South County Commons Avenue” represent progress… of a sort.

The developers could have restored a real urban center such as Hartford, Detroit, or for that matter several cities ringing nearby Providence, and put their brownfields to new use. But for some reason, it has become an American custom to kill some trees, pave some land, build a fake city, make people drive to it, drive up the price of food, waste gasoline, contribute to climate change, and call it a “Commons” — a name that evokes soothing nostalgia for a time when cities turned their communal spaces into parks, not shopping malls.

Misquamicut State Beach, Westerly, Rhode Island…

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