I've lived in the same Manchester suburb since 1997/98. The city centre has changed much in that time. Businesses come. Businesses go; but in the last few years, an explosion of flat and apartment building has occurred right in the city centre.
It's one thing to seek perceived uniqueness by the social encouragements of having tattoos, but this following list of common denominators surely can't offer people much in terms of difference: German cars, lip inflation, Botox, teeth whitening, prowess in mixed sex gyms, and having victim-hoods to fashion brands. These are only small factors now, when you consider the way that city centre living is so powerfully drawing people in.
It mustn't be apparent to people, that the strength of advertising on television and the internet alone, is very clearly enhanced, by having all your customers and target customers, in the same small physical space, inadvertently selling/ tempting one another. Human adverts for the desires, wants and routes out of frustration become all around; they are *it*: part of a "grass is greener" metropolis, the perfect capitalistic consumer scenario, and one which the designers of; perhaps that "human zoo", love to watch its critical mass being approached.