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I'm not from Sweden but from Spain, but here the trend in many cities (including mine) during the 60s and the 70s was the same as you describe, including awful

I'm not from Sweden but from Spain, but here the trend in many cities (including mine) during the 60s and the 70s was the same as you describe, including awful crimes against cultural heritage. Wonderful "art nouveau" buildings were demolished to make room for asphalt and soulless cubes of concrete. I often wonder what they were smoking in those decades to see such things as normal. I can understand that they thought that the car was the future, seeing all the convenience and not being aware of the full importance of the drawbacks (congestion, pollution, unhealthy lifestyle, etc.), but couldn't they at least have some appreciation of beauty? Atlantic Hotel, A Coruña, opened in 1923, demolished in 1967: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/56/99/92/569992a08191d5af05933cdf5aa17849.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/56/99/92/569992a08191d5af0593... The new hotel taking its place from 1968: https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/64/ac/17/nh-atlantico.jpg https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/64/ac/17/... Just one among many examples that give one the urge to reach for a time machine and an axe...

ddalex 9y ago
My first take is the maintenance cost. When labour is plentiful and cheap, you can have teams of cleaners to meticulously brush each corner in the intricate rooms, corridors and decorations of an Art Nouveau building. When the cost with the labour force rises, you need to clean with fewer people, and faster. You need to use larger tools to cover the same area faster, and the tools require simple large shapes where, a vacuum for e.g. can easily go in any corner - hence a cube. Add the need to build fast and cheap, so concrete is it, or, after technology advances, just metal, glass and drywall - who has time to wait for the concrete to set? - so you end up with utilitarian cubes of cheap materials.

ddalex 9y ago

My first take is the maintenance cost. When labour is plentiful and cheap, you can have teams of cleaners to meticulously brush each corner in the intricate rooms, corridors and decorations of an Art Nouveau building. When the cost with the labour force rises, you need to clean with fewer people, and faster. You need to use larger tools to cover the same area faster, and the tools require simple large shapes where, a vacuum for e.g. can easily go in any corner - hence a cube. Add the need to build fast and cheap, so concrete is it, or, after technology advances, just metal, glass and drywall - who has time to wait for the concrete to set? - so you end up with utilitarian cubes of cheap materials.