**SS: How Urban Design Guidelines impact development and setting more realistic and practicable YIMBYistic standards**
Recent posts have at least implicitly upheld unfeasible aesthetic standards for development as a model of urban development, but these only serve to vindicate one of the most potent sources of NIMBY push back against new development, the fact it is often just plain hideous. By holding these up as examples of the answer, we set ourselves up for failure.
This debate obscures a few important factors.
Firstly, the current role of urban design standards in many North American municipalities that actually make building uglier AND less affordable. NIMBYism, its in infinite insidious guile, reproduces itself by creating the very things it despises in order to justify itself.
Second, the relative importance of the public realm versus the value of a particular school of architecture. How most of the building looks – especially down to the very specific details and ornaments – is just not very important for the guy in the street. The first floor will always be key, and theres a lot of reasons for why we come up short in that respect as well that have little to do with architectural aestheticism but do have to do with regulation.
Besides the buildings, of course, just as important is the rest of the public realm. Is it reasonably quiet? Is it clean? Does it feel safe? Is it protected from the elements? Or is it next to a 6 lane arterial road and baking in the sun? If you make a place simply a passively pleasant place to be, the fact its not your favourite kind of baroque architecture is kind of tertiary. These decisions do not burden development with the cost and responsibility of improving public life in high density areas.
We may consider some basic principles to help improve design guidelines to make buildings more attractive, and more affordable, and thereby improve public consent to development while improving development feasibility and housing affordability. [Credit to this post for the sketch](https://bsky.app/profile/alfredtwu.com/post/3kc5u5nyizy2k) in the last slide.
Of course, any rule, especially subjective ones, have exceptions, but you need to know the rules to break them effectively. Art would be pretty banal if you banned anything as ‘rule-breaking’ as impressionism. However, most developers are probably not giving their architects carte blanche to make a statement piece. They just want to comply with the rules and get it built. So some basic guidelines can help broker a more favorable compromise for everybody, while diverging from those rules is a more purposeful exercise of artistic intent.
If it wasn’t for fair use [r/neoliberal](r/neoliberal) would owe whoever took that first pic a lot of royalties.
Jokes aside, I’m in favour of just building enormous grey blocks and then painting a big number on the side so you can always find your way back. There’s a beauty to the ultra dense, brutalist architecture you get in a lot of East Asian and ex Soviet countries
spongoboi on
“you can’t have nice looking buildings because. . . you just can’t ok!!!!”
3 Comments
**SS: How Urban Design Guidelines impact development and setting more realistic and practicable YIMBYistic standards**
Recent posts have at least implicitly upheld unfeasible aesthetic standards for development as a model of urban development, but these only serve to vindicate one of the most potent sources of NIMBY push back against new development, the fact it is often just plain hideous. By holding these up as examples of the answer, we set ourselves up for failure.
This debate obscures a few important factors.
Firstly, the current role of urban design standards in many North American municipalities that actually make building uglier AND less affordable. NIMBYism, its in infinite insidious guile, reproduces itself by creating the very things it despises in order to justify itself.
Second, the relative importance of the public realm versus the value of a particular school of architecture. How most of the building looks – especially down to the very specific details and ornaments – is just not very important for the guy in the street. The first floor will always be key, and theres a lot of reasons for why we come up short in that respect as well that have little to do with architectural aestheticism but do have to do with regulation.
Besides the buildings, of course, just as important is the rest of the public realm. Is it reasonably quiet? Is it clean? Does it feel safe? Is it protected from the elements? Or is it next to a 6 lane arterial road and baking in the sun? If you make a place simply a passively pleasant place to be, the fact its not your favourite kind of baroque architecture is kind of tertiary. These decisions do not burden development with the cost and responsibility of improving public life in high density areas.
We may consider some basic principles to help improve design guidelines to make buildings more attractive, and more affordable, and thereby improve public consent to development while improving development feasibility and housing affordability. [Credit to this post for the sketch](https://bsky.app/profile/alfredtwu.com/post/3kc5u5nyizy2k) in the last slide.
Of course, any rule, especially subjective ones, have exceptions, but you need to know the rules to break them effectively. Art would be pretty banal if you banned anything as ‘rule-breaking’ as impressionism. However, most developers are probably not giving their architects carte blanche to make a statement piece. They just want to comply with the rules and get it built. So some basic guidelines can help broker a more favorable compromise for everybody, while diverging from those rules is a more purposeful exercise of artistic intent.
[Dumb boxes by Mike Eliason](https://www.theurbanist.org/in-praise-of-dumb-boxes/)
!ping YIMBY
If it wasn’t for fair use [r/neoliberal](r/neoliberal) would owe whoever took that first pic a lot of royalties.
Jokes aside, I’m in favour of just building enormous grey blocks and then painting a big number on the side so you can always find your way back. There’s a beauty to the ultra dense, brutalist architecture you get in a lot of East Asian and ex Soviet countries
“you can’t have nice looking buildings because. . . you just can’t ok!!!!”
https://preview.redd.it/xr0wwj00dj0h1.png?width=340&format=png&auto=webp&s=80afe70141197fbda8c3fc0426bdefed3d82a18e