Though there are several things that drive it, the real problem is that today's "modern" architects have no vision and imagination - they produce soul-crushing

Though there are several things that drive it, the real problem is that today's "modern" architects have no vision and imagination - they produce soul-crushing dreck that incorporates all the worst features you'd expect from really bad copies of 100-year-old modernism, cubism, and brutalism. This is a problem with single-family "modern" homes, but especially, with the newer mixed While density is always best avoided, it can be done well: The Scots showed how you can have uniformity of design with character, warmth, and function in their architecture of 200 years ago. The result is what we see virtually mandated now in cities like Austin: A modern rehash of Soviet/Eastern Bloc housing projects, recast as "vertical mixed use" developments. Mid-rises that are invariably too tall and too close to the street, blocking out the sky and leaving just a strip of concrete to the road, which is now rendered even less useful by the copious bike lanes that no one uses because it's way too damn hot most of the year. They have only minimal windows on the exterior walls, and if there's a balcony, it's usually either a completely non-functional decorative appendage a foot deep, or it's too small for even a cafe table set. Green space and lawns (even though grasses are the most effective plants for cleaning the air), or even big trees, are discouraged. Worse, no one wants to live in them unless they have to: First of all, they have mandated "low income housing", guaranteeing a resident population of thugs and criminals, second, the real estate is so incredibly expensive that no commercial or retail businesses can survive in the first floor locations that are supposed to provide some aspect of "community". (Austin's preferred housing model is deliberately family-hostile.) I'll take suburban single family homes ANY day over that - this kind of "modern" architecture will crush your soul - people should be free and kings and queens of their own castles, not proles in a pod eating bugs with Big Brother on the viewscreen.