Urban planners have a stake in preserving restaurants that are unique to local areas in order to cultivate a distinctive, authentic landscape. Yet, over time, chain restaurants (i.e. franchises) have largely replaced independently owned restaurants, creating a landscape of placelessness. In this research, we explored which (types of) locales have an independent food culture and which resemble McCities: foodscapes where the food offerings can be found just as easily in one place as in many other (often distant) places. We used a dataset of nearly 800,000 independent and chain restaurants for the Continental United States and defined a chain restaurant using multiple methods. We performed a descriptive analysis of chainness (a value indicating the likelihood of finding the same venue elsewhere) prevalence at the urban area and metropolitan area levels. We identified socioeconomic and infrastructural factors that correlate with high or low chainness using random forest and linear regression models. We found that car-dependency, low walkability, high percentage voters for Donald Trump (2016), concentrations of college-age students, and nearness to highways were associated with high rates of chainness. These high chainness McCities are prevalent in the Midwestern and the Southeastern United States. Independent restaurants were associated with dense pedestrian-friendly environments, highly educated populations, wealthy populations, racially diverse neighborhoods, and tourist areas. Low chainness was also associated with East and West Coast cities. These findings, paired with the contribution of methods that quantify chainness, open new pathways for measuring landscapes through the lens of unique services and retail offerings.

城市规划者在保护当地独特的餐厅以培育独特的、真实的景观方面有着重要的利益。然而，随着时间的推移，连锁餐厅（即特许经营）在很大程度上取代了独立拥有的餐厅，创造了一种无位置的景观。在这项研究中，我们探索了哪些（类型的）地区拥有独立的饮食文化，哪些类似于McCities：在一个地方和许多其他（通常很远的）地方一样容易找到食物的美食景观。我们使用了美国大陆近 80 万家独立和连锁餐厅的数据集，并使用多种方法定义了一家连锁餐厅。我们对连锁进行了描述性分析（指示在其他地方找到相同地点的可能性的值）城市地区和大都市区级别的流行率。我们使用随机森林和线性回归模型确定了与高或低链相关的社会经济和基础设施因素。我们发现，对汽车的依赖、低步行性、唐纳德·特朗普 (Donald Trump) (2016) 的高投票率、大学生集中以及靠近高速公路与高连锁率有关。这些高度连锁的 McCities 在美国中西部和东南部很普遍。独立餐厅与密集的步行友好环境、受过高等教育的人口、富裕的人口、种族多样化的社区和旅游区相关联。低连锁也与东海岸和西海岸城市有关。这些发现，