09-09-2026, 03:01 PM
Do any municipalities have meaningful legal power to force developers to build "nice" things? This really seems like a complaint that we expect the market to deal with, but since the market is so insanely skewed by restrictive land policies, developers can build whatever they want.
Nice buildings come from a culture that induces them, not from strict rules that can't be enforced anyways - nor would I trust anyone who says they are a design and taste expert. We built beautiful thingsin the past because we valued beauty. We legislated beauty away some time ago when they invented zoning and turned the city into a cold transaction between "taxpayers".
Architects only exist today to go live in old buildings with beauty and charm and build new monstrosities that they thankfully don't need to live in. Why would we listen to them? I have no time to be lectured to by people who can't build beautiful things for real people even if they legally could, meanwhile real people are just looking a roof over their head in a system that tries to block that as much as possible.
Every policitical and social sphere in this city and province and country treats higher density housing as pollution and now we have to be lectured to about how the scraps we eventually get are ugly and cheap?
Nice buildings come from a culture that induces them, not from strict rules that can't be enforced anyways - nor would I trust anyone who says they are a design and taste expert. We built beautiful thingsin the past because we valued beauty. We legislated beauty away some time ago when they invented zoning and turned the city into a cold transaction between "taxpayers".
Architects only exist today to go live in old buildings with beauty and charm and build new monstrosities that they thankfully don't need to live in. Why would we listen to them? I have no time to be lectured to by people who can't build beautiful things for real people even if they legally could, meanwhile real people are just looking a roof over their head in a system that tries to block that as much as possible.
Every policitical and social sphere in this city and province and country treats higher density housing as pollution and now we have to be lectured to about how the scraps we eventually get are ugly and cheap?
local cambridge weirdo