Where Are the Beautiful Cities? (opens in new tab)

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25 pointslleims2mo ago6 comments

6 comments

I'd venture a guess that a lot of the examples were part of the Works Progress Administration[1], which employed laborers, craftsmen, engineers, artists, and more as a response to the Great Depression. While it ended during World War II, the humans that worked in it would have continued in the labor force.

There's also the improvements in building techniques like curtain walls in commercial buildings, and truss connector plates and aluminum/vinyl siding in residential allowed for laborers to replace craftsmen like masons and carpenters. While you'd think that would free up more money for beautification, the economic preference for many individual shareholders and taxpayers doesn't seem to support that.

Add in car-centric development and the advent of television, the internet, and smartphones, and what's the point of making things beautiful anymore? You won't appreciate the finials on a lamppost from the inside of your car, and if the world is ugly, you can look at your phone.

But it's not fully explained by the unwillingness to spend money either. I think the postmodern movement's impact on public beautification turned a lot of people off the idea. Eschewing traditional beauty is fine for museums and galleries, but there are a lot of murals out there that ruined perfectly good walls. Chicago's Cloud Gate, Philadelphia's LOVE Park, Minneapolis's Spoonbridge and Cherry, and I'm sure a large number of other instances of public art since the postmodern era can be fun, visually striking, and iconic. But I'd hesitate to call them beautiful from an aesthetic standpoint, especially when compared to their cities' existing monuments and statues. However, that's a matter of taste. And as we've grown more divided almost all matters of life, both literally and figuratively, even if we all agreed to spend $X on public beautification, I doubt we'd be able to meaningfully agree on what's beautiful.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration

kelseyfrog2mo ago

Adolph Loos[1] and the post-WW2 minimalists won; that's what happened.

We took Louis Sullivan's maxim, "a rationally designed structure may not necessarily be beautiful but no building can be beautiful that does not have a rationally designed structure" to its logical conclusion, "form follows function". Rather than being the starting point for beauty, it became the end of it and we trained generations of architects to prioritize one aesthetic.

1. Ornament and Crime (1908) https://www2.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf

like_any_other2mo ago

That's what most of the usual reasons given (excuses and lies, really) ignore. They'll blame economics (despite us getting richer by nearly every metric, and extra funding only getting us more aggressively ugly buildings [1]), or the lack of craftsmen to carve gargoyles (as if there weren't countless beautiful buildings without anything so intricate), changing tastes (despite overwhelming public consensus older buildings looked better), or most hilariously, some kind of "survival of the prettiest", where supposedly buildings used to be just as ugly in general, but most were demolished, and only the best looking kept (yet e.g. old photos of Manhattan will show nearly every building being beautiful, at least compared to today).

Meanwhile they turn a blind eye to the dominant schools of thought in architecture, Loos and Bauhaus and modernism, that basically outright require ugliness and generic sterility.

[1] https://www.thehideawayexperience.co.uk/blog-post/scottish-d...

qkeast2mo ago

There’s a similar post that I can’t find that relates to ornamentation and detail in infrastructure as simple as a pole on a sidewalk – an ornate and designed pole replaced with a simple round post. Perhaps someone else remembers the source.

mc322mo ago

I think the reason they replaced the anchor-chain like fence with generic fencing is twofold: one economic, and the other to protect against idiots. When you have king tides, you still have people going down there taking pictures --but it can be risky if the waves crash high, if not careful, someone could be swept on to the rocks and cold bay waters. The chains were ornamental and strong, but they would not stop someone from falling over as they slung low.

SJ St James Street PO is one of those very nice POs with elaborate masonry, hardwood counters and brass knobs, ornate and wrought metalwork and such.

tom_2mo ago

I was wondering just the other day whether those Statue Head Twitter accounts were still going.

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