Why do we spend so much money building such ugly places to live?

[hedgehog]

I commented on this to my daughter last week. Since World War II, we've built suburbs, highways, strip malls, covered malls and office campuses. Why? They're all damn ugly. My proof? Has anyone ever seen a painting of these places demonstrating their beauty? There are paintings of urban settings going back centuries, but none of a strip mall. We love old barns, but who loves a parking lot?

Just look at all the photos of Wasilla hitting the net. Beautiful setting, ugly buildings!

[Arugula Latte]

1. It's funny. When I was a kid I went to New Mexico frequently to visit my grandparents.

I was struck by the ugliness of the town they lived in in southeastern NM (flat area with sagebrush and oil wells ... like east Texas). Eventually, I came to realize, at a very young age, that the town had next to no building codes or regulations because it was a hardright Republican laissez faire kind of place. I couldn't understand why those people didn't give a crap about how their manmade surroundings looked. That was one small step that pushed me away from Republicans (my grandfather was a big Repub and my parents were moderately Republican at the time, which eventually changed, thank goodness). Essentially, I realized at an early age that they didn't care about anything other than money.

[hedgehog]

2. It must have something to do with building everything around the automobile

instead of around foot power.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Exactly so!

For a time, I was on Portland's Pedestrian Advisory Committee--something that most communities don't even have. Our job was to comment on all new building and urban infrastructure projects in terms of pedestrian and wheelchair friendliness. It was an eye-opener to see how many architects and designers' first thought was parking and automobile access, with the required pedestrian access squeezed in as an afterthought, often in a really inconvenient way.

When we suggested that they reverse the process, design for pedestrian access first and then put the cars in as an afterthought, they looked at us as if we were crazy.

At least Portland has thought about the matter. One of the most discouraging things about the Twin Cities is not only the ugly commercial strips in the suburbs, but the fact that it allowed suburban-style developments (strip malls with huge, windswept parking lots) in the middle of both St. Paul and Minneapolis--but ONLY in poor areas.

The traditional cities of Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and even the old parts of American cities, are aesthetically pleasing because they were built to a human scale in the pre-automotive era. Think of Boston's Beacon Hill and North End, the old parts of Charleston, Savannah, St. Augustine, and New Orleans, San Francisco, Monterey, and isolated neighborhoods in other cities. They appear on calendars and in coffee table books. They are in fact not the result of building codes, but the natural result of assuming that most people would walk everywhere. Even old rural towns are walkable, but the descendants of the founders prefer to allow long, narrow strip malls on the highways leading into town.

If you assume that most people are going to drive everywhere, no building blends in with any other building, and there's no non-automotive access between properties. If the employees of the Acme Corporation Office Park want to go the fast food place next door for lunch, they have to drive, or else try to scale a chain link fence. If they prefer the fast food place on the other side of the highway, there's no pedestrian crossing or pedestrian bridge.

When I was living in Portland and coming back to visit my suburban relatives, this type of thing used to make me cranky. I'd be out Christmas shopping, and the next store on my list would be visible only about 300 feet away, but I'd have to get into the car and drive to it.

I moved back here on the condition that I could find a place to live in the city within walking distance of essential services and on a good bus line. I found the right neighborhood, and I'm on what passes for a good bus line here.

However, the auto-centric strip mall+isolated housing tract model of development has prevailed for over 60 years, which means that two complete generations have grown up that way. They don't notice the ugliness (especially if they don't travel anywhere but Las Vegas) any more than a fish notices water. TV teaches them to be afraid of the city, so if they move, they move to another strip mall suburb, just like the one they left, only possibly with different kinds of trees, if they move far enough.

[hedgehog]

8. (older cities) ..."They appear on calendars and in coffee table books."

Exactly - we know what looks good, and we build the opposite!

[bean fidhleir]

14. I bet this is one of your favorites, as it is mine

...or would be, if you lived in/near Cambridge (I forgot that it's in Mass and you're in Minn)

[Cleita]

18. Portland is actually one of the best cities for habitat that I have been in.

Other cities should study it as a model. Spokane is a second. My city of San Luis Obispo tries to maintain the quality of their downtown area too, which the mission and creek are kind of the scenic lynchpin. They need some help though in dumping their hardcore Republican rancher mentality though.

[Warpy]

6. I get a kick out of the lack of codes out here

because at its best, it's a hotbed of creativity. I'm thinking of a neighbor whose yard was decorated with old toilets turned into fountains and planters.

[RadiationTherapy]

3. The overconcentration of yang energy has resulted in overly "functional" buildings

and much less flowing and aesthetic yin energy.

[Warpy]

5. I've just never understood suburbs

Even fenced back yards are not terribly private since everybody's windows are high enough to give them a good look over the fence. Forget the hot tub, in other words, unless you want to wear a swim suit.

Then there is the housing design with a patch of brick here, a patch of shingles over there, a chalet roof and some stone next to the doorway. Most suburban houses are a morass of clashing styles thrown into a blender and buzzed up to give an ugly puree at the end.

The new ones are a moonscape of huge garage doors facing the street with the house hidden behind the blank expanse. It's very uncomfortable to walk in such an area, not that there are ever sidewalks.

I tend to cling to the inner city, although I've managed to survive in a small town. I absolutely loathe suburbs, though I do visit them from time to time just to get cheaper groceries.

[hedgehog]

9. The worst part of suburbs is that the houses and the layouts bear

no relation to local terrain or climate. My 1880 house is aligned with the winter sun track, not the road. We get the maximum solar loading possible. The trees I've planted to replace the originals keep the house in the shade and cool all summer long. Even in this semi-rural area, if you drive around you'll see all the older houses are hidden behind trees this time of year while the new houses are sitting in the middle of a bare acre of grass with a token tree planted 150' away from the house!

Developers offer the same housing styles coast to coast and bulldoze everything flat to accommodate the same un walkable streets!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Older houses in Minneapolis are designed for the climate

Screen porches or three-season porches for hot days, closed off entryways just inside the front door to keep the heat in on cold days, storm windows for the winter, screen windows for the summer, attics with windows at either end for ventilation and cooling, and basements for shelter from tornados. :-)

The streets are lined with trees, too, for shelter from the sun.

[Warpy]

12. Yes, the houses lined up in military precision, same distance

from each other and from the street, and oriented without respect to the sun is galling, too.

They fell into that habit with Levittown patterned after military post housing and never recovered.

[arcadian]

15. That's so true.

Driving around "out in the country" I can often tell where old house sites are located, there will be a clump of very large trees on a hill with surrounding croplands. Invariably, if there is no longer a house there will be an old chimney standing in the middle of the trees. Hill for breeze, trees for shade. We have definitely lost our connection with the land and it is going to come back and bite us in the ass. Recently, I've been noticing houses that are built at the bottom elevation of a piece of property because the road is at the very top. Who are these people that buy such houses? Don't they know that everything rolls downhill? Not the least of which is water.

[Arugula Latte]

16. There is a term used here for those houses with the prominent garages.

In Portland, there are a lot of restrictions on building because we have an urban growth boundary. Most of the lots in the newer developments are small. They try to accommodate a garage and a big house on these tiny lots, so as a result the garage is the first thing you notice sticking out -- thus the term "snout houses."

[Warpy]

19. I love it!

I'm going to start using it here in NM where most new neighborhoods are moonscapes of snout houses.

[NeedleCast]

7. Maybe it's because I'm a city slicker, but I sometimes find beauty in freeways and malls

One persons eyesore is another's Picasso.

[SmokingJacket]

11. We care more about saving the dough.

Why pay extra to put up a stone building when you can put up one made of poured concrete with styrofoam trim? (My local mall has styrofoam trim; people have gone past and poked their fingers into it!)

I think there might be a movement, with green buildings, to move away from the totally butt-ugly, though. Most green architecture is made of natural materials and uses light well.

[marmar]

13. We had an intern from Sweden working for a semester at my company.......

.... and he was telling me about his travels around the U.S., and how all the suburbs looked exactly the same - the same four styles of houses, the same strip malls with the same stores, the same chain restaurants and the same fast food places. The only difference between the 'burbs of Detroit and Phoenix was that the subdivisions had grass and oak trees in Detroit and sand and palm trees in Phoenix, he said.

:)

[Cleita]

17. My late husband was an architect.

I asked him the same question. He said basically that developers put up the cheapest buildings that they can get away with and still build to code. It's all about profit. Most of those tract houses and strip malls aren't even designed by licensed architects but the developers for profit only. They put up the least they can get away with. Comfort or aesthetics seldom are considered. In the case of Wasilla, I read that they have practically no zoning regulations nor building codes. I hope they don't have an earthquake.