Is "Good Enough" OK?

The Global Village and the Loss of Local Distinctiveness

Why do we feel the need to sell our cities like they’re products?
Walking from my car to the playground outside the Greenville Zoo, I overheard a local trying to convince out-of-town friends that our zoo was “small but great.” I get it—we all do this. We instinctively want to validate our hometowns, our local spots. But why? Why do we feel like we have to justify the ordinary instead of just letting it be what it is?

The zoo itself is perfectly fine. It has giraffes and big cats—enough to delight my son, who loves seeing the animals up close. But it’s not remarkable on a national scale, and it doesn’t need to be. Yet, in our media-driven world, it almost feels taboo to admit that something is just good enough rather than the best. That phrase feels like an insult.

There was a time when a place's character was almost entirely shaped by its inhabitants. The food, the architecture, the way people spoke—all reflections of a particular area's history, geography, and culture. But today, that local distinctiveness is being eroded, not by deliberate cultural destruction but by something more insidious: the all-consuming presence of the global village.

Marshall McLuhan coined the term "global village" to describe how electronic media collapsed time and space, instantly connecting people across the world. But with that collapse came a tradeoff—places began to lose their distinctiveness as everything became part of a shared, homogenized culture. The internet accelerates this even further, making trends, aesthetics, and ideas instantly portable, dislodging them from their original contexts and scattering them everywhere.

The Pressure to Compete Nationally

Take Greenville, SC, for example. It has undergone an impressive transformation in the last few decades, earning a spot on endless "Top 10" lists: top 10 small cities, best places to retire, best downtowns in America. And yet, as these accolades stack up, Greenville’s identity seems to shift toward being the place that belongs on those lists rather than simply being itself. The pressure to compete nationally—to be seen, ranked, and validated—seems to be shaping how the city markets itself, how new businesses present themselves, and even how residents talk about where they live.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to Greenville. My sister lives in Knoxville, TN, and every trip I take there reminds me of that. Look at coffee shops in any mid-sized American city, and you’ll likely find the same Edison bulbs, reclaimed wood, and minimalist typography. Look at real estate development, and you’ll see identical luxury apartments with names like "The Lofts at [Insert City Here]." Even independent bookstores, which should be the definition of local character, are starting to look and feel the same everywhere. It’s as if the particular has been sanded down to fit a template of what a good, desirable, modern city should look like.

The irony is that while people crave authenticity and a sense of place, they often default to the aesthetics and branding of everywhere else. This is what Alan Jacobs gets at in From Tech Critique to Ways of Living: the problem isn’t just that technology connects us, but that it reshapes the way we think about where we live, pulling us toward global validation rather than local flourishing. When everything is connected, it’s easy to assume that your city or town needs to measure up to a national standard, rather than simply serving the people who live there.

What Would It Look Like to Reclaim Local Distinctiveness?

It would require resisting the urge to frame every city improvement in terms of national rankings. It would mean focusing less on how a place is perceived by outsiders and more on how it actually functions for those who call it home. And perhaps most importantly, it would mean recognizing that not everything needs to be the "best." Some things just need to be good enough—not to the world, but to the people who use them.

If the global village flattens local distinctiveness, then the response must be to reclaim the value of the particular—not because it competes well on a national stage, but because it is ours. I like our little zoo in Greenville. My wife and I have a family membership, and I love that I can just pop down and sit with my son and watch the giraffes to his heart’s content. And yes, there are bigger and better zoos in the world, but I’m trying to be more of a person who is perfectly content letting those zoos fade into the background for now.

This isn’t about accepting mediocrity—it’s about broadening our understanding of what makes something good. True authenticity isn’t about fitting an aesthetic mold; it’s about creating spaces where people can genuinely be themselves. That means not every place will cater to my personal tastes, and that’s okay. The more people feel free to experiment, to create businesses or public spaces that reflect their own vision rather than an expected formula, the more likely it is that something will emerge that truly resonates with me.

Not everything in life needs to be an “experience” or a destination. Some things just need to be. So let’s stop marketing our lives and start living them.