strip mall identities

The general sentiment about urban sprawl here is that it is a good thing because of the network of familiarity and convenience that it offers to comfort-minded transients, and that it is a bad thing because it is a shining example of everything that is wrong with corporate globalisation. One thing I picked up from the RVers interviewed in the film "This Is Nowhere" is that every part of America, especially around Walmart which is usually situated on a strip mall, looks the same. This makes it hard to remember all the different places visited, and in an anti-globalisation point-of-view it is guilty of slowly wiping out the variety of ancient cultures in various countries. I think it is important to remember Che-Wei's attitudes towards design, which he expressed quite well in his writing about car dealerships. One of the most important ideas I learned about from Pratt was from John Lobell, when he spoke about how the digital age is a step up from the industrial age in terms of production. He said that the industrial age was characterized by mass production of the same thing over and over at an extremely efficient and economic rate which made products available to many people. He then foresaw that the potential of the digital age could make it possible to turn out variations of the same thing at the same pace and efficiency of production that the industrial age offered. This idea has been explored beautifully through Haresh's work with Milgo/Bufkin, which he likes to call an exercise in "mass customization". The question I'm leading up to is, can the modular/morphological ethic of design be a solution to an otherwise bland and dominating landscape?