Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Susan Sanders
Branson, the largest in the cluster of small towns in the southwestern section of Missouri has become the fastest growing, particularly in terms of greatest tax revenue, in the state as well as the Number One Coach Destination for American vacationers and the Number Two Vacation Destination in America, just behind Disney World in Orlando and just ahead of the Mall of America in Minneapolis. 4500 miles from Lisbon, nestled in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, the once sleepy little town of Branson, with an actual population 3706, is now the “country music capital of the universe,” as so stated in 1991 by Morley Safer on the Number One news show “60 Minutes.” This presentation will examine Branson, Missouri as an emblematic “City of Choice” in which the future public realm in America is designed by and constructed with an architecture of entertaining leisurely delights and an urban space confined to the interior of the automobile which seem to embody and epitomize our post-industrial desires as we search for “souvenirs of experience.” If, the apparent “success” of Disney World, Mall of America and Las Vegas portend of a society that regards shopping as a cultural engagement, leisure as a means of self-definition and history as a passive theme-park experience, then one can propose that Americans love to shop, surf and sightsee. It will be the assumption of this paper that Americans love to shop, to shop in the traditional sense; to surf as it applies and extends shopping, thereby making it the most pervasive paradigm for the exercise of choice; and to sightsee as it is a spectator activity similar to TV watching and auto-driving in America.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Intl.1995.47
Volume Editors
John K. Edwards
