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I think it's so funny how almost all new housing is incredibly ugly. You could convert a lot of NIMBYs to MIMBYs (Maybe In My Back Yard) if developers picked a

I think it's so funny how almost all new housing is incredibly ugly. You could convert a lot of NIMBYs to MIMBYs (Maybe In My Back Yard) if developers picked a style to build other than "box with cheap siding that juts right up to the edge of the lot". I am aware that many currently-loved styles were considered atrocious when they were invented, and I direct your attention to the thousands of disgusting strip malls, regular malls, and faux-brutalist office buildings from the 50s-70s that the public is at best apathetic towards as proof that simply because some styles became loved, not all styles will do so.

arcticbull 4y ago
I actually really like it haha. But either way my opinion is their property, their call. So long as it's safe. [edit] It's NIMBY's own fault if they don't like what gets built. They had their chance to participate in the process by designing a reasonable and fair housing element. They said no, and chose violence. It's time to enter the 'find-out' phase.
- quacked 4y ago
  There is of course no accounting for taste. My most recent comment that wasn't this was similar denouncement of the most contemporary UI design trend--I just can't stand flat, rectangular black-grey-beige minimalism, especially when it's compared to the past 10,000 years of colorful, angular ornamentation from thousands of cultures both alive and extinct. As for the "find-out" phase--many cities are going into that phase, including my beloved hometown. I'm founding out that what The People want is 5-over-1 stick frame buildings owned by out-of-state development companies. I don't even know what I could possibly do in order to motivate my city to take itself seriously architecturally and build some new housing that doesn't scream "warehouse". Perhaps I should become a housing developer and propagandist and do it myself.
acdha 4y ago
I kind of see where you’re coming from but I would look around the suburbs and note how many houses were constructed on the grounds of “hey, it’s cheap!” — and people generally didn’t mind if it was reasonably built. They probably planted something in front anyway and got on with life. Given the number of people desperate for housing, I’m content leaving this for the rich people who want custom builds. The NIMBYs aren’t going to relax even if the entire project is designed by a who’s who of architecture.
- quacked 4y ago
  I get upset that people pay thousands of dollars to go abroad to look at nice, dense towns with pretty buildings and then come back to the US and say "anyone who wants to live in a nice town like the one I just visited needs to get out of the way of Progress, we need cheap people warehouses and we need them now". I'd happily raze several square miles of land in my hometown and build nothing but housing if what came after was something like Copenhagen, instead of Houston (which is what's currently happening).
  - CPLX 4y ago
    How much of Copenhagen and the other Euro cities you’ve been to have you really toured though? There’s absolutely no doubt that those cities are just generally better designed and their core areas are far more aesthetic and well tended to than most American cities. But with that said the vast middle class areas of those cities where people actually live are a lot more generic and cookie-cutter than the parts people tend to see when traveling. They have plenty of boring new construction too.
    - quacked 4y ago
      I like to take explore the living areas of most Euro cities I've been to--Paris, Glasgow, Rome, Florence, etc. I spent a semester abroad in Paris about ten years ago and spent most of my time in one of the recently-built satellite towns, which was a mess of concrete and cheap modern buildings. The actual generic middle class areas are usually several steps above the American generic middle class areas, but I concur that most of the new builds are the same cheap, boring, new-right-now approach. It's quite depressing to me that so many people unthinkingly accept the premise that there's no time to build society to any standards that someone would be proud of or pleased about. It builds an apathy and almost a resentment to any sense of time or place within its residence. It's a lack of culture enforced by architecture. A good example is advertisements. They clutter every public space and make people simply ignore what they're seeing. "Just an ad." People will go hours through a city and never look up because they already know what's there.
  - acdha 4y ago
epistasis 4y ago
People always complain about the contemporary building style, just as they did about all those ticky tacky Victorian homes built here on the west coast, or the ugly repetitive brown stones in Brooklyn. Personally, I don't think there would be any less opposition to these homes, no matter the visual appearance. People simply hate change, until they experience it, after which they quickly adjust and forget there was a problem to begin with. And towards that end, I think that any visual standard should be completely disqualified from evaluation of building plans; that is, unless there is a pre-approved, and affordable, style of building that will always be approved no matter what. Otherwise, quibbling over appearances will always be a veto point that will be used regardless of appearances.
- quacked 4y ago
  > People always complain about the contemporary building style This is always mentioned, and it's just not true. If it were true that people always "quickly adjust and forget there was a problem" then those all-concrete freeway plaza towns would be "beloved" instead of reviled, and the "all highways all the time" city remodeling would be considered perfectly acceptable by everyone. It is actually possible to build an ugly city that remains ugly after the contemporary ethos has passed. No one's buying plane tickets to visit the architecture in Columbus, OH.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    > This is always mentioned, and it's just not true Are you saying there's a building style that's not criticized while it's being built? Could you give an example? The rest of the paragraph instead focused on people not living Colombus, OH, which I'm not sure how you got to. The primary reason people aren't flocking to Colombus OH is because of the lack of jobs. People tend to flock places because of economic opportunity, not because of architecture.
    - reducesuffering 4y ago
      Umm, people are definitely are flocking to Columbus OH and it's probably because of jobs, it's one of the fastest growing cities in the US. GP was saying they're not going because of architecture, orthogonal to whether they're net migrating or not...
reducesuffering 4y ago
It's a consequence of making housing incredibly expensive. When costs are mostly tied up in land and regulation, already too much on people, then housing prices are attempted to be lowered by reducing the construction cost. If you whack the land and regulation costs, so that everyone can easily afford housing, then you'll see luxury splurging on building design for aesthetic and status factors.
ndriscoll 4y ago
If someone is currently living on a forested hillside where everyone's on ~2 acre plots, I doubt they'll be happy about the density suddenly increasing 20x regardless of the architectural style. These people apparently have the money to live in the middle of San Francisco if that's what they wanted.

arcticbull 4y ago

I actually really like it haha. But either way my opinion is their property, their call. So long as it's safe. [edit] It's NIMBY's own fault if they don't like what gets built. They had their chance to participate in the process by designing a reasonable and fair housing element. They said no, and chose violence. It's time to enter the 'find-out' phase.

quacked 4y ago
There is of course no accounting for taste. My most recent comment that wasn't this was similar denouncement of the most contemporary UI design trend--I just can't stand flat, rectangular black-grey-beige minimalism, especially when it's compared to the past 10,000 years of colorful, angular ornamentation from thousands of cultures both alive and extinct. As for the "find-out" phase--many cities are going into that phase, including my beloved hometown. I'm founding out that what The People want is 5-over-1 stick frame buildings owned by out-of-state development companies. I don't even know what I could possibly do in order to motivate my city to take itself seriously architecturally and build some new housing that doesn't scream "warehouse". Perhaps I should become a housing developer and propagandist and do it myself.

acdha 4y ago

I kind of see where you’re coming from but I would look around the suburbs and note how many houses were constructed on the grounds of “hey, it’s cheap!” — and people generally didn’t mind if it was reasonably built. They probably planted something in front anyway and got on with life. Given the number of people desperate for housing, I’m content leaving this for the rich people who want custom builds. The NIMBYs aren’t going to relax even if the entire project is designed by a who’s who of architecture.

quacked 4y ago
I get upset that people pay thousands of dollars to go abroad to look at nice, dense towns with pretty buildings and then come back to the US and say "anyone who wants to live in a nice town like the one I just visited needs to get out of the way of Progress, we need cheap people warehouses and we need them now". I'd happily raze several square miles of land in my hometown and build nothing but housing if what came after was something like Copenhagen, instead of Houston (which is what's currently happening).
- CPLX 4y ago
  How much of Copenhagen and the other Euro cities you’ve been to have you really toured though? There’s absolutely no doubt that those cities are just generally better designed and their core areas are far more aesthetic and well tended to than most American cities. But with that said the vast middle class areas of those cities where people actually live are a lot more generic and cookie-cutter than the parts people tend to see when traveling. They have plenty of boring new construction too.
  - quacked 4y ago
    I like to take explore the living areas of most Euro cities I've been to--Paris, Glasgow, Rome, Florence, etc. I spent a semester abroad in Paris about ten years ago and spent most of my time in one of the recently-built satellite towns, which was a mess of concrete and cheap modern buildings. The actual generic middle class areas are usually several steps above the American generic middle class areas, but I concur that most of the new builds are the same cheap, boring, new-right-now approach. It's quite depressing to me that so many people unthinkingly accept the premise that there's no time to build society to any standards that someone would be proud of or pleased about. It builds an apathy and almost a resentment to any sense of time or place within its residence. It's a lack of culture enforced by architecture. A good example is advertisements. They clutter every public space and make people simply ignore what they're seeing. "Just an ad." People will go hours through a city and never look up because they already know what's there.
- acdha 4y ago

epistasis 4y ago

People always complain about the contemporary building style, just as they did about all those ticky tacky Victorian homes built here on the west coast, or the ugly repetitive brown stones in Brooklyn. Personally, I don't think there would be any less opposition to these homes, no matter the visual appearance. People simply hate change, until they experience it, after which they quickly adjust and forget there was a problem to begin with. And towards that end, I think that any visual standard should be completely disqualified from evaluation of building plans; that is, unless there is a pre-approved, and affordable, style of building that will always be approved no matter what. Otherwise, quibbling over appearances will always be a veto point that will be used regardless of appearances.

quacked 4y ago
> People always complain about the contemporary building style This is always mentioned, and it's just not true. If it were true that people always "quickly adjust and forget there was a problem" then those all-concrete freeway plaza towns would be "beloved" instead of reviled, and the "all highways all the time" city remodeling would be considered perfectly acceptable by everyone. It is actually possible to build an ugly city that remains ugly after the contemporary ethos has passed. No one's buying plane tickets to visit the architecture in Columbus, OH.
- epistasis 4y ago
  > This is always mentioned, and it's just not true Are you saying there's a building style that's not criticized while it's being built? Could you give an example? The rest of the paragraph instead focused on people not living Colombus, OH, which I'm not sure how you got to. The primary reason people aren't flocking to Colombus OH is because of the lack of jobs. People tend to flock places because of economic opportunity, not because of architecture.
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    Umm, people are definitely are flocking to Columbus OH and it's probably because of jobs, it's one of the fastest growing cities in the US. GP was saying they're not going because of architecture, orthogonal to whether they're net migrating or not...

reducesuffering 4y ago

It's a consequence of making housing incredibly expensive. When costs are mostly tied up in land and regulation, already too much on people, then housing prices are attempted to be lowered by reducing the construction cost. If you whack the land and regulation costs, so that everyone can easily afford housing, then you'll see luxury splurging on building design for aesthetic and status factors.

ndriscoll 4y ago

If someone is currently living on a forested hillside where everyone's on ~2 acre plots, I doubt they'll be happy about the density suddenly increasing 20x regardless of the architectural style. These people apparently have the money to live in the middle of San Francisco if that's what they wanted.