SongScape: "My City Was Gone," by the Pretenders

Welcome to a new, regular feature of Eclectic Pedestrian. While American popular music long has addressed social-justice issues, it less frequently directly addresses such topics as sprawl and development. My goal here is to begin a different type of conversation, one where geographers, planners and others in related fields can let their hair down a bit, perhaps pick up an air guitar instead of a PowerPoint clicker, and talk about meaningful music and how this particular type of music can change our landscape - figuratively or literally.
First up is this classic from the Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde and the lads succinctly express the disdain, even sorrow and lamentation, at returning home, only to find that home has been stripped of all its dignity.
In September 2007, Hynde returned to her hometown of Akron, Ohio, to open a vegetarian restaurant and to talk about her love of the city, saying in the Akron Beacon Journal:
"My blood is Akron. It courses through my veins ..."
"Let's get rid of the malls and bring it all back downtown."

MY CITY WAS GONE, by the Pretenders; written by Chrissie Hynde
I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go, Ohio
Well I went back to Ohio
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go, Ohio
I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go, Ohio