Most people prefer traditional architecture

In general you have to separate what people prefer from what they're willing to pay for. It's very clear that people will pay more for a slightly larger home with one extra bedroom or bathroom than for a smaller home with more ornate decoration. These are the forces which lead to the construction we see today: people build at the lowest cost what people will buy for the highest price.

I've also actually renovated my old place. I did it because I didn't want to rebuild the place entirely (there was no need, it was woven brick, more solid than most bunkers), and because I would have had to agree with the neigbors, which was ... let's politely call it "not guaranteed".

But very quickly it became clear why that was the right decision: building codes. People legislate building codes, but of course they're unwilling to DO anything. So old buildings, built against old building codes, don't have to change, and that means they effectively get to ignore building codes. If I rebuilt the place I would have had to move the house (as in physically move it, just 4 meters, but it's a house, 4 meters might as well be 400 kilometers, you have to rebuild it). I would have to give up at least 40% of the surface area (the "ground surface") AND one of the floors. Net result: the new house would have been about half the living surface of the old one.em.

So obviously the renovated house is worth a lot more than a new house: for starters it's double the size!

It's even self defeating: the isolation of the old house is better. Yes, people legislate modern isolation materials but if the house MUST be a lot smaller there must be a lot more contact area with the cold air, because it wouldn't be built against the neighbor's house anymore and a LOT less thermal mass (thermal mass = free heating, more or less) so you're starting from a very bad starting position.

“Form follows function” is attributed to Louis Sullivan, author of very beautiful buildings. Whatever excuse modernist architects have for inflicting misery upon us laymen, this principle is not one of them.

Several things are at play here. The first is that pre-Modernist architecture was heavily designed around natural lighting and cooling. Many buildings and houses designed and built before the 1920s used combinations of materials and elements that maximized the use of daylight. Transom lights and polished marble floors for example were often used to allow light to bounce through a room and to induce airflow. The light came in from a high place and bounced from the floor to fill normally unlit spaces, while hot air was pushed up and vented through the transom windows. If you've ever been in an office building built from the 1870s through the 1940s you'll notice every single transom only opens outwards towards the hall, as the hall created a high pressure space that pushed air into the low pressure rooms, an effect that is amplified when paired with ceiling fans. Meanwhile things such as mullions allowed the windows themselves to be set more deeply inside the wall by providing a strengthening member that allowed a larger opening. That larger opening with the windows set further in provided shade while still allowing in diffused light, and helped in preventing glare upon the glass while creating an overhang using the building's facade or cornices to allow the windows to be opened while it was raining because eaves are useless above two stories of height.

People don't understand these individual parts and don't understand how they all work together. But they definitely feel the cumulative effects, and those cumulative effects are much friendlier than Modernist and post-Modernist design. Modernism and all the schools that followed it rely on electric technology to fill in the gaps in the design, which makes them feel less accomodating to humans. Electric lighting, electric heating and cooling, and electro-mechanical traversal. Those things aren't as tactile, and many aren't even visible. The Modernist building does not present itself as something humans made, maintain, and interact with, but instead presents itself as a machine that you are temporarily inside of as a foreign entity because everything designed to outwardly accomodate humans is instead either streamlined down or fully away. The overhead lights shine light that you cannot influence, the hidden vents expel air from a place you cannot see or change, and the hanging facade glass walls provide no palpable separation from the outside world. Your mind tells you that this mid-century tower is a place where you do not belong.

Its nonsense. If a building has people and businesses, it is good, if it doesn't and has druggies it will feel bad. An unmaintained mansion with druggies will be equally creepy. I am not sure how you are saying a place is inviting of druggies, what are the physical designs that you think make it so? If you say lack of buyers, then to a druggie wny structure is good enough.

I find crttain kinds of fakeness disgusting. I am entitled ot my opinion as are you to yours if you prefer fakeness.

I think McMansions are honest. Stick framing and plywood is a functional, affordable and most people seem to find it looks okay.

If people disagree with steel and concrete, nothing is stopping them from pooling money to build a brick building. I don't think zoning should be an issue, if a place allows skyscrapers it probably will allow your brick multistorey building. If its liked so much why aren't people funding it?

Either this design is too expensive or its not liked enough.

And I disagree, I find neoclassical buildings cold and inhuman, I think its actually its itnended design too, to overwhelm with sheer scale and induce despair. But I see it as just a design choice not a religion ir existential theory. Gothic is even more deliberately hostile looking.

The barrier to entry for interior is even lower, who is stopping you from buying tools or commisining a cabinet shop to build your vision?

Brutalism is perfectly human friendly, its a building, its meant to house people and take them in and out of their office or apartment. If anything I'd say brutalist structures are probably more walkabale than other multi storey structures. What you make of the interior is up to you. Paint your home as you want, put any furniture you like, as with any other building.

What specific way do you think brutalism or any other building style you would prefer as example is not human friendly?