>>10467774Lego city has always trended a bit futuristic now and then. The architecture hasn't usually been especially grounded, it's meant to be more symbolic than representative. This isn't what a police station really looks like, but it gives off a definite *feel* of a police station, in some sleek near-future style.
I think that City downtown gives off the *feel* of a downtown well - a food stall, a skybridge, a small park, and a couple tall buildings, with one being somewhat futuristic and the other being (partly) a bit more classic. It's not a downtown in our world but it could be a downtown in some world, maybe some utopian mid-sized city in the 2040s.
The friends set on the other hand doesn't give nearly as much of a sense of place, it doesn't feel like much of anything - it's two discoherent buildings sort-of connected by a bridge to nowhere with an odd staircase jutting into a plaza. The shop is alright and would make a nice set on its own, the apartment is god-awful and fails at not just looking like an apartment, but looking like a decent building at all. That massive, steep 45 degree slope in the roof just looks bizarre. The benches pressed directly against the fountain and blocking the entire plaza do as well. If you killed the terrible apartment and the bridge and turned the set into just the shop with a small plaza and that fountain, it'd be leagues better.
