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Remember Lac-Mégantic, the Canadian town that had the terrible oil train disaster that killed 47 people in 2014? I was wondering how they're doing today.
They had a very charming and popular commercial strip downtown prior to the disaster. But almost all of these buildings were burnt down or irreparably contaminated by the disaster.
On this strip, they've rebuilt virtually nothing. Large fallow fields stand there.
Instead, they've decided to rebuild their downtown across the river in a new, greenfield development. There's an enormous amount of parking. It doesn't look like this is pleasantly walkable from the rest of the town.
There's no street view, but all the pictures I can find show some extremely generic North American strip mall sprawl. No charming mixed-use buildings fronting a busy and popular street here.
I realize this isn't the biggest tragedy compared to the enormous loss of life, but it seems quite sad that the oil industry took away something that's apparently now irreplaceable, and car culture replaced it with a sad simulacrum.
