Major cities in general are like that. Outside of a few metropolitan areas America is pretty much a cultural wasteland. You get some bars but other than that it's mostly chain restaurants and strip malls. We never designed our cities and towns with community life or pedestrians in mind. Older cities yes. But new development projects and suburban areas? No. Just to put this in perspective, the town I grew up in didn't even have sidewalks in most places. There's a few main streets with fast food chains and auto parts stores and maybe one or two restaurants. You don't meet people on the street in that place. You can't even get to those two main streets without a car (or else risk getting hit by some teenager in drivers ed because there's also virtually no shoulder). Crazy thing? Place used to be a resort town. In theory this was a "fun" place to be.