We should not hope to replace all themes by some naked living without fantasy. That would be a cold meta-position. Partly because they narrow our focus, themed places offer locales for festival, and "a non-quotidian encounter with architecture." (Gottdiener 1997, 113-14) What has to happen is not that we disown themes and fantasy; but that themes and fantasies do not own us.
The key is not to eliminate themes, but to enjoy them for what they are, which is to refuse them dominance and to put them within a more complex process of inhabitation than the one they want to define.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001