Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
11–20 of 308 posts
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#12> That is why the increasing cost of craftsmanship, while real, cannot account for the decline of neighborhood beauty. It's not the cost, it's the availability. I'm currently in the process of a home renovation. If you want a master craftsman to build you say, kitchen cabinets, you may have to wait years for them to be available. Or you can go to the store and buy custom built cabinets from a factory and have them in…
That's where I think there's hope for a third option. Where I grew up there were a lot of Sears catalog homes, and they were really nice. Those were all manufactured and are a whole lot more beautiful than a builder grade home today.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#13We've lost all sense of aesthetics as something that exists outside an individual's mind. Aesthetics used to be an independent study of philosophers for millenia, until our modern age decided that all aesthetics are equally good. This fundamentally has to do with the embrace of relativism at all levels of society.
This is going to be controversial, but in the west, the ultimate cause of the decline in objective beauty is a rejection of Christianity, which, for millenia in the west, has insisted that there is such a thing as objective beauty.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/ugly-as-sin
I'd also recommend "The Abolition of Man" by CS Lewis (not explicitly christian, but Lewis was obviously extremely devout and a major apologist)
It remains to be seen if the west will develop a sense of objective beauty without a shared moral system.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#14I've seen some reasonably beautiful, middle class neighborhoods that were designed as recently as the early 1970's, but nothing since then. And while there are many aspects of modern interior design that I appreciate, floorplans tend to be universally terrible for anything designed since then as well. I have yet to walk into a (non-custom) home that was built since the year 2000 that I would ever want to live in.
The floor plan thing is real. A 1960s-1970s split level will have 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, a huge living room, a good size dining room, and a kitchen, all around 1800sqft.
Or, you can buy a new 2500 sqft home that has the same, plus a walk in closet in the master.
Heck I've seen plenty of 3000sqft 3 bedroom homes!
It is insane. Sure these new floor plans have 2 dining rooms, a breakfast nook, a living room, and a family room, but that is also monumentally stupid.
I've talked to new home builders and they have said that due to the demand of immigrant buyers for more bedrooms, they are now starting to make some 4+ bedroom houses at 3500sqft and above. Like... what? If you want a 5 bedroom house from the 70s you'll be out less than 2500 sqft, and that will be a very generous and spacious house.
I just don't get it. Modern floor plans are asinine. Builders will reply "Well it is what buyers want", sure, but your pool of surveyed buyers is limited to people who can afford a 1.5 million dollar 4 bedroom house[1]!
I do sort of get it, because land is such a huge portion of the overall house price, builders are basically stuck making high end "luxury" housing (never mind that the quality is very far from luxury) at high prices. If a plot of land costs $500k+, no way is anything resembling reasonable housing going to be built.
Oh this also contributes to why people are having less kids. If an extra bedroom costs $200k or so, of course no one is going to have more than 1 baby.
Disclaimer: Above rant is only applicable to large coastal cities.
[1] I've talked to people in this pool, a majority of them are also wondering why the hell they are forced to purchase a house with 2 dining rooms.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#15Buried in the article is an important point: people care a lot about interior and not much about exterior appearance. Typical cookie-cutter suburban neighborhoods are built assuming nobody walks around in them anyway. On the inside these houses are pretty deluxe, though.
Also, in the US it's very difficult to build a house out of solid wood like my house from 40s. New materials might not look as nice but are less wasteful, more energie efficient and faster to build with.
Finally, people do come to new neighborhoods, e.g. in Portland the newish neighborhoods like Pearl District are successful in the sense that they are new, high density and mixed shopping/dining/living. Not for low income though.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#16Architectural beauty is heavily dependent on context. Ornate gothic architecture, for example, peaked in popularity in the USA around 1870 and fell out of style in the early 1900s. Interest in it was revived in the late 20th century, so the same neighborhoods that would have been considered ugly and outdated 60 years ago are now "beautiful" again.
A lot of it is also about uniqueness. The author is rightly awed by pre-war architecture in Europe when he travels, but tourists worldwide are similarly fascinated by glass skyscrapers in New York.
Talking at the neighborhood level, houses constructed today are meant to be more transient vs those from the last century. Builders (whether a property developer or individual resident) will consider sale and resale value first and foremost before anything else. A "unique" house will have far less buyer interest.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#17From "A City is not a Tree" by Christopher Alexander:
> It is more and more widely recognized today that there is some essential ingredient missing from artificial cities. When compared with ancient cities that have acquired the patina of life, our modern attempts to create cities artificially are, from a human point of view, entirely unsuccessful.
> Architects themselves admit more and more freely that they really like living in old buildings more than new ones. The non-art-loving public at large, instead of being grateful to architects for what they do, regards the onset of modern buildings and modern cities everywhere as an inevitable, rather sad piece of the larger fact that the world is going to the dogs.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#18We've lost all sense of aesthetics as something that exists outside an individual's mind. Aesthetics used to be an independent study of philosophers for millenia, until our modern age decided that all aesthetics are equally good. This fundamentally has to do with the embrace of relativism at all levels of society. This is going to be controversial, but in the west, the ultimate cause of the decline in objective beaut…
>This is going to be controversial, but in the west, the ultimate cause of the decline in objective beauty is a rejection of Christianity, which, for millenia in the west, has insisted that there is such a thing as objective beauty.
Just to play Devil's advocate, if that theory held up you'd expect there to be a correlation between how religious people in a given area are and how much they value architecture.
Yet, for example, the Deep South in the USA is not known for it's architecture, whereas parts of continental Europe are (even today).
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#19I disagree: Many of the most attractive neighborhoods to me were built recently.
I used to love walking around the area in Palo Alto around University Ave, on the residential side of Middlefield. Many of those buildings are new.
When I could buy, and then build, a house in Massachusetts, I chose recently-built, upscale neighborhoods. The difference, compared to most neighborhoods, is that the houses are more expensive, and built to a higher quality. (I also favored neighborhoods with restaurants in walking distance. This is possible, even in suburbia.)
I suspect that the older neighborhoods the article favors are just the upscale ones. The cheaper neighborhoods built centuries ago didn't last.
Re: Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?
#20I disagree: Many of the most attractive neighborhoods to me were built recently. I used to love walking around the area in Palo Alto around University Ave, on the residential side of Middlefield. Many of those buildings are new. When I could buy, and then build, a house in Massachusetts, I chose recently-built, upscale neighborhoods. The difference, compared to most neighborhoods, is that the houses are more expensiv…
Yes survivor/selection bias was mentioned in the article.
Agree about the Palo Alto observation, when I visit my in-laws down there I enjoy just walking around the old PA neighborhoods. It's like a free luxury house and garden tour. Total outlier nationally and probably globally, though, to be honest.