Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

In the OT, Tatooine is basically a desert planet without much going on. Luke wants to "get off this rock". Most of the inhabitants seem to be Jawas or sand people. There is one city, Mos Eisley, which basically seems to be a transfer point for pilots. Tatooine is hardly what one would consider a destination.

But in the PT, Tatooine is a hoppin' place. It's actually a bit like ancient Rome. The pod races are like gladiator contests with tens of thousands of screaming spectators.

That idiotic rewriting of Tatooine twenty years after it had already been established was one of the major reasons I wanted to leave the theater. That "rock" should have never been visited again. Yet, as so often was the case when Lucas faced writer's block, he went the easy route and shrunk the universe. One of many shameful middle fingers to the 1977 film.