101–110 of 308 posts
> For one thing, there are autos all over Paris, so at least in principle it ought to be possible to build in ways that are both highly attractive and allow for cars. The presence of cars does not mean it was built for cars. The most important difference between pre-war and post-war neighborhoods is that one was built FOR cars
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10109987/Fiston-Ngo...
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If demand so significantly exceeds supply, why aren't folks with these skills raising prices?
They already charge a significant amount. But that doesn't increase the supply of master craftsmen. You can't just make more masters. :) Also, there is still a price ceiling. If they charge too much, people will choose the cheaper alternatives even if they aren't as good.
You can given enough time. Your second point is more likely the real reason. These jobs might seem to pay lots from the outside but if you dedicated the same time to a more boring job like management you very quickly make a lot more money with almost unlimited room to bump your prices.
We'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, fo…
If we look at more catholic countries in the Americas, the middle class neighborhoods do look nicer in my opinion.
Edit: I should specify I don't believe this is specific to catholicism. Other religions also embrace beauty, like Islam and Hinduism. Protestantism by and large rejects the idea that material goods can embrace God, in their rejection of icons for examplr
We'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…
Our ruling class is extremely moralizing. They aren't relativist at all. They only seem that way to you because their morality isn't identical to yours (though they are genealogically related)
1. People (in the US at least) overall consistently choose more land over living somewhere walkable. In a lot of places, the marginal cost of more land is near zero; and
2. The dirty secret of car dependency is that most people (in the US) like being car dependent. In all but the densest largest cities, private vehicles are so much more convenient. Even in Manhattan there are a nontrivial number of people who cling to their cars.
When a lot of people say they want to live somewhere walkable what they really mean is they want their same 4000 square foot house on half to one acre of land next to somewhere walkable.
Walkability is predicated on high land costs so obviously that doesn't scale.
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I agree a lot of the balance has shifted this way but I don't see this as bad. When you are very wealthy you can have both but for those without that much money I don't blame anyone for choosing functionality over the aesthetics of a neighborhood. It seems rather insane to me to insist that your neighbor must increase their budget 20 or 40 percent (perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars) just so your house can be a…
This attitude is a good-sized chunk of the reason why the article was written. The constant focus on "how to make it as cheaply as possible, now" has brought some benefits: we can make housing that in many ways (not all) is better and cheaper than it ever has been in the past. But ... building neighborhoods of "desirable" character is about more than how much your house costs right now. It's about the legacy a cultur…
I like nice cars but I dont insist that everyone drive a European sports car just because it would be aesthetically more pleasing. Ultimately, a city/town will be better off if people can spend 20% of their income on housing instead of 50%. Not just because they are selfish or short-sighted but because they can actually use the additional resources on things for themselves, their family, and their community.
How does a policymaker argue to spend $X more on a prettier building? That would just come off sounding too subjective to justify today. Now we will no doubt see psychological studies telling us obvious truths about humanity - that living in nice places feels good actually. The paper will say things like "pretty buildings improve quality of life by 23% and productivity by 6%". But unlike subjective opinion, a scientific paper is a defensible piece of evidence so we need the study to justify building a pretty neighborhood in a modern context.
This clinical economic view of the world is pervasive today so nothing can be justified outside of a utilitarian lens.
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> Another big reason for ugliness is the extremely shallow and underdefined rooflines typical of ranch house style. You need to have steep well defined rooflines that give the house shape. These are clearly conservative preferences, not objective truths. Like social conservatism, there are valuable learnings embodied (steep roofs shed water -- more important in some climates than others), but there is also a lot of f…
It’s odd to me to place this as a “conservative” preference. In what way is this conservative? And why is that meaningful? Anyway - there is growing evidence of “objective truths” in architecture and design. Namely work tracking things like heart rate, eye movement, etc. Findings are indicating that asymmetrical houses or imposing skyscrapers are actually stressful to humans. The fist being stressful because you natu…
I'm definitely not buying the idea that asymmetrical houses are "stressful" in any meaningful way. I mean, I guess you could say anything that is interesting and non-bland is stressful, but that is quite a stretch.
As the article hinted at the simple answer is Car Dependency. Suburbs are regulated and built to accommodate cars now and not people. The topic is explored thouroughly on the 'Not Just Bikes' youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes which uses information from urban planning group 'Strong Towns' https://www.strongtowns.org/ .
A good example of a car centric city that is very attractive is Seattle from ten years ago. The city had a strong sense of community because it was composed of intimate neighborhoods mostly with single family zoning rather than mid rise boxy apartment blocks everywhere, ample green space for its population, and roads with little traffic. It is because Seattle was so attractive that people and businesses flocked to it. Now those aspects are going away as density, anti car policies, and other issues are making the overall quality of life worse.