Also the necessity for cars in the US because everything is just so damn big makes shopping streets hard to manage. We don't have neighborhood shopping centers anymore. You need to shop, you drive there and park at one store, do your shopping, then drive to the next store.
They do still exist, but they're rare and have been killed off largely by big box stores, as Wak notes.
They’re making a comeback in the larger coastal cities. Usually provoking massive cries of “Gentrification!” Which is all I’m going to say about that, since I’d like to keep my Shadowrun forum focused on fictional political arguments and not real ones.
In the thread where gentrification is a major plot point.
But more seriously, the US mall culture has largely died off, but the idea of "shopping streets" is still pretty foreign. You have some "Historic downtown" areas in smaller towns, but even then you want to park and go in more than park and walk through bunches of stores. A street market, with small seller booths and the like is an even more unusual situation.
I wis... hrm. I catch myself in thje middle of a thought and remember Google maps is a thing.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cookeville,+TN/@36.1542266,-85.5000756,127a,35y,268.89h,45t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x886718a70cf14c59:0x2f4ecce7ea405e1d!8m2!3d36.162839!4d-85.5016423My hometown. This is Kroger, the primary food source for many people. The road it's on (South Jefferson) is the primary lifeline for most people. For the Euro-people out there who are curious, run up and down the road and have a look. You'll find that every business has a parking lot, some "mini-strips" of 3-5 stores sharing a building and parking lot, but virtually no one walking. This is one of the few areas in town with sidewalks mind you, but they're not much used. Cars are *everything* for here. In a major metro area, this works differently of course, but, just as an example of Generic American Town, this is a good sample.
Back to the Orks, tho!
One aspect that I liked was the idea of a "Low-rise", where the ground floor was the top of a building and then you got more layers going below that. So, a small shop might have the ground floor open for customers, but the level below that would be the living space for the family, and there might be a small space below that to serve as an "Attic". Wealthier people have more sublevels, as do major businesses. A bank might have a ground floor lobby but then have eight more levels below that for offices and whatnot.
Of course, that's in the industrialized area. MOST of the tunnels are just, well... tunnels. Natural(ish) arms that run out in all directions with occasional larger caverns where people dwell. Some are natural, but as Bull noted, quite a few were created by magic. And *no one* has ever explored all of it. There's no telling what's down there. (Rumor has it that there's a dragon lair under Council Island, for instance, but no evidence has ever been given. See the Seattle Box Set for more information.)
