Submission statement: Samuel Hughes makes the case that modernist architecture plays a significant role in opposition to new development.
Posted by Effective-Branch7167
Submission statement: Samuel Hughes makes the case that modernist architecture plays a significant role in opposition to new development.
Posted by Effective-Branch7167
2 Comments
Yeah, this had been my thesis thus far – people vote on aesthetic and cultural coding as well as attaching that as identity markers*, and utilitarian/blank/logistically low-overhead international styles less ornate elements or genuine neighbourhood character, as in exterior facade fit-ins, are… less welcome, shall we say.
“We want beauty in public” is a different value proposition than “we want more personal, private, discretionary prosperity and growth, and more efficient and scalable construction/maintenance in non-growth based elements in our budgetary concerns”, and one’s more civically demonstratable, with direct impact and correlations and visual.
*(let’s not lie,, for many, it’s not about legal codifications or policy other than policy as a coded aesthetic instead of outcomes for a bunch of people, and it’s not just self-interest or demographic legal protection and rights – aesthetic has culture and values attach to them beyond the academic anthropological study, and I’m not even sure whether it’s downstream or upstream of politics, when politics is the question of “what sort of preferable society you want to live in and make, now and in the future? What is the good lifestyle you want to achieve and can envision in a future government?”
A bunch of people go for MAGA because Levittown certainty and slur-slinging early internet/70s-90s broadcast media as nostalgia and macho stuff is their aesthetic, a bunch of people are dems because diverse, humanistic urban melting pot of social and cultural vibrancy is their aesthetic.
Even “Beltway Policy/Establishment Wonk” of 2012-16 is its own culture and aesthetic, as “New England Brahmin” and “Yuppie” and “Small Town Main Street” and “Rural Cosplay in the exburbs” and “Tough New Yorker” and “Artistic Julliard/TISCH” are.)
A lot of people do decry new developments as “ugly” but when you dig into what’s “ugly” about it it’s usually the size of the development.
Even then, it gets mentioned a lot sure but when you listen to the comments of people opposed to something it usually has much more to do with density and parking and “beauty” is usually secondary.
We see that in the use of historic preservation today where many applications acknowledge that the property isn’t particularly beautiful but should be preserved anyway to highlight some period (and prevent any new development).
I’m not really opposed to making buildings look nicer but I don’t think it’s really the key to unblocking the nimby logjam.