The origins of Main Street, USA being reduced in commentary to just a shopping center are negative, often Marxist-oriented critiques that, unable to attack the resonance of its pre-Modern design and storytelling experience, had to reduce the Disneyland experience, by removing its storytelling component, to something already established and reviled, the shopping center. The shopping center is reviled because it contains commerce and pleasant (entertaining) design, components that from a Marxist construct only exist to reinforce the established superstructure in an attempt to hold off the inevitable class struggle, a new look for the old "bread and circuses." Some of the first places to receive such critiques were the boulevards of Paris because they were designed to be pleasant (entertaining) spaces where commerce could easily take place, but yes the city does not tell a story. Similarly The Grove does not tell a story but Main Street, USA does tell a story which is what makes it themed. All three use referential, pre-Modern design. The Grove gets tossed in with Disneyland because Postmodernism eventually reduced pre-Modern design elements to a sort of popular entertainment and did so by often actively invoking the design language of Disneyland while still ignoring its storytelling component. The Gove is only considered fake and different because it came after Modernism when such design was uniformly deemed fake.
