You might want to take a look at Atlas Obscura Places map: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-places-in-the-atla.... For the US at least, it shows a variety of interesting and quirky sights in most parts of the country.

Yeah, not everybody lives in Switzerland or the San Francisco Bay Area.

I've been in many a road trip up, down, and across the Great Plains of the US, where I spend a full day driving only to arrive in a town and geography that looks the exact same as the one I woke up in that morning. Only the signs are different.

Would you mind sharing the general region where you are? Based on your criticisms it sounds like the US, but my experience is quite different. I have only lived on the West coast though, and we're quite spoiled with amazing natural beauty around every corner here. I had a great time road tripping around small towns in the northeast around Vermont and Maine though.

Yep. My partner came with me to visit family in the midwest. It's flat and everything is spaced out and there are no sidewalks because no one walks because you have to drive to get anywhere. The best park is a little wooded area that you can loop in 15m. If you haven't lived is a place like that, it's probably difficult to imagine how much nothing is going on.

I live in Texas, which is probably very similar to where you’re thinking of, and I could list off at least 10 different places within a 1 hour radius that should be visited.

If you’re an American, I highly, highly recommend the book American Ramble by Neil King, Jr. The one-sentence summary is “a guy walks from Washington to New York” but he connects with history (and the present) at a walking pace along the way, experiencing much more than the typical Washington->NYC traveler.

You are generally correct, despite the rebuttals in the reply comments to yours.

But I think the challenge here is that we can have great places if we do the following:

1. Focus on transportation and ways of living that focus on walking or taking a tram.

2. Create and support medium-density, mixed-use neighborhoods

3. Require good, sound architectural principles. When you think of Paris and those narrow streets or the apartment complexes in the best neighborhoods, we need those. None of this modernist bullshit or 5-over-1s made with recycled concrete. Use bricks, stone, and more. Incorporate design elements requiring skilled craftsmen, and pay for it.

Those 3 alone should get you most of the way there.

My final comment would be, when you're thinking about spending $5,000 - $10,000 or whatever on a big international trip to go look at some nice stuff in some other country, consider spending that money instead on your own home, or garden, or donate to organizations that maintain those things for you. It also doesn't have to be all or none, you can still travel, and still invest locally. Make where you live the kind of place you would have wanted to travel to. Gardens in Great Britain, for example, can happen where you live too you just need to spend the money and build and maintain those things... like they do.

The transit and transportation stuff is much more difficult to fix. Most Americans want a Jeep and suburban house and to wait in line and beep their horn at the Costco gas station and that's a tough hill to climb, but the 3 items I highlighted above are guaranteed to increase quality of life and lower costs long-term.

somehow I think of pickleball.

What you're describing is really why the Backrooms is resonating with the kids today - the homogeneity of an environment and culture devoured by capitalism.

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