The failure of modern of architects, Corbusier, 'houses are machines for living' and the earnest ugly result, were partly the result of an inadequate philosophy - materialism - and partly that in a secular age, intellectuals like architects tried to play the new priests, which led to the hubris that they could ignore the past and ignore the people of the present and create something entirely new - brutalism etc. Such a pity. We don't just have to repeat the past, we can be contemporary and try new materials but small incremental changes in the spirit of what has worked would make our built environment a pleasure.
Being from the other side of the pond, I confess that I don’t know what impact elitest architectural trends in the UK have on housing shortages, or the beauty of individual buildings, but I suspect it’s minimal.
You’re comparing apples to oranges. Public vs. private.
The brutalist architecture you abhor seems to be concentrated in government financed public housing aimed toward the lower classes or government buildings that are intended to house administrative offices. As a non-architect, I find some of them quite interesting.
I’m assuming most single family and small apartment buildings are built by private developers. So, unless I’m grossly mistaken, the charming English row houses you revere were probably constructed by private developers and contractors, using standardized designs and constructed with the most cost effective materials and labor available.
I’m reasonably certain, that if UK developers are at all similar to American ones, return investment is the driving force in what gets built and what it looks like, not architectural distinction.
Current acute housing shortage in England is the result of excessive immigration and a system where developers restrain supply to guarantee a profit - need to change the system. The nasty modern stuff was often in the public sector as you suggest, not least the universities - I'm in Cambridge - though private housing could be low quality boxes as well. Fortunately, public disquiet and some more thoughtful architects has meant that modernism is on the wane and traditional materials of brick, wood and tiles are used in buildings which are contemporary, on a better scale, have good landscaping - trees and shrubs - and are generally more pleasant to live in. Who sponsors them public or private doesn't need to matter.
I could write thousands of posts on this topic but must dash to the station. But I have enough time to say that I never warmed up to New York. The scale was always hostile, too tall, too crowded, too dense. And quite ugly. Then I discovered Brooklyn. The Park Slope/Cobble Hill/Brooklyn Heights are is a real delight and a perfect urbanism for me (leaving aside its ridiculous politics). Something about the human ability to relate to scale is clearly at play here
But also manageable is a level of mixed density, with houses and midrises and even some highrises blended together, as long as there is sufficient greenery and landscaping. Quite a few European cities built extensively in this manner and I always admired the garden city effect in planning.
Okay, thanks. Also, you can control for income, but the effects of being surrounded by other high-income people are also part of quality of life. When the local owners complain about apartments' being built, it's not just the buildings and more traffic, but, "That kind of people will be sending their children to OUR schools!"
one obvious solution to me - and they do this in Germany - is to reserve new builds for local residents. If you take Truro in Cornwall, which has one of the highest house price to incomes in the country. even if you build 5,000 new homes, the locals are relatively poor and wouldn't be able to afford them. Londoners would mostly buy them. People might buy them if they thought their children or grandchildren would be able to own them.
This is why immigration makes house building even harder; in the long term all population increase is from immigration, so people think 'why should I lose the countryside to accommodate immigration-derived population expansion, when I didn't vote for that in the first place?'
How does it work to build houses for local people? If the demand-pool, so to speak, is restricted, that would tend to reduce the market price for the houses, because the people with the most money are excluded from bidding. That being the case, how do you get anyone to build houses that don't cost more to build than the buyer can pay? Are they allowed to build reasonably-sized houses?
if you are building say 100 then you allow a certain number to be on sale to anyone, and reserved a certain percentage for local people (with time limits on resale). the ratio would be established so that developers can still make money. It would also depend on the size of the community. if its a fairly biggish town the locals-only one would be more than if its a very small community, in which case you're basically giving them away.
Unless the government wants to pay for it but that is unlikely right now.
Charles did not get enough praise for his support of traditional architecture. It is a huge facet in the identity of a nation. Without traditional architecture of a place, you could be anywhere on Earth with zero distinctions. That would be a huge tragedy.
As a lifelong New Yorker (Manhattan to me =NYC, but I recognize that is a narrow view), I was intrigued by your article.
The most expensive apartment buildings in New York are the new ones, the ugly fingers pointing 50 stories plus in the sky.
Prewar (before 1940) buildings are generally co-ops and have become less desirable/less expensive for many reasons, including going through the crazy co-op application process and the cost and time of renovation.That said, I think the prettiest buildings in New York are the older ones, which are taller than 3-4 stories but are still human sized and well proportioned.
As well, many of these older buildings are the ones that surround Central Park, and I believe the best views of the Park are not from helicopter level, but while walking or running (not fleeing but for exercise!) through it.
<<The housing crisis is the number one problem facing British society>>
It really isn't. AI is the number one problem facing British society and every other society.
In the next 5-20 years, if AI development is not stopped, things are going to become Very Weird. Some of those Very Weird things are going to be Very Bad for society. Before the year 2050 AIs will run the world and there will be no possible way for humans to take back control. The AIs will have their own goals, which won't include caring about human beings. The AIs will control all the resources and territories that previously belonged to humans, they will eliminate any humans who are troublesome or who seem like they might become troublesome, and eventually humanity will suffer the same fate as wolves, bears and lynx suffered in the British Isles at the hands of a more intelligent species.
The "housing crisis" problem, like every other human problem, only matters in a world in which AI progress is stopped before AIs take control.
As you say, elected leaders can't even think about 11 years into the future. What about you? Can you think about 11 years into the future? It seems like you think the near future is just going to be "business as usual", even though we are currently creating machines that are becoming more intelligent every year.
Which rival were the Brooklyn New Englanders competing with: Manhattan, Boston, London, other?
Burroughs and Wallace portray Brooklyn, before the 1898 NYC unification, as a bastion of 'proper-Bostonian' bourgeois respectability and propriety, happy to have a bit of distance from the teeming masses in Manhattan.
The failure of modern of architects, Corbusier, 'houses are machines for living' and the earnest ugly result, were partly the result of an inadequate philosophy - materialism - and partly that in a secular age, intellectuals like architects tried to play the new priests, which led to the hubris that they could ignore the past and ignore the people of the present and create something entirely new - brutalism etc. Such a pity. We don't just have to repeat the past, we can be contemporary and try new materials but small incremental changes in the spirit of what has worked would make our built environment a pleasure.
Being from the other side of the pond, I confess that I don’t know what impact elitest architectural trends in the UK have on housing shortages, or the beauty of individual buildings, but I suspect it’s minimal.
You’re comparing apples to oranges. Public vs. private.
The brutalist architecture you abhor seems to be concentrated in government financed public housing aimed toward the lower classes or government buildings that are intended to house administrative offices. As a non-architect, I find some of them quite interesting.
I’m assuming most single family and small apartment buildings are built by private developers. So, unless I’m grossly mistaken, the charming English row houses you revere were probably constructed by private developers and contractors, using standardized designs and constructed with the most cost effective materials and labor available.
I’m reasonably certain, that if UK developers are at all similar to American ones, return investment is the driving force in what gets built and what it looks like, not architectural distinction.
Current acute housing shortage in England is the result of excessive immigration and a system where developers restrain supply to guarantee a profit - need to change the system. The nasty modern stuff was often in the public sector as you suggest, not least the universities - I'm in Cambridge - though private housing could be low quality boxes as well. Fortunately, public disquiet and some more thoughtful architects has meant that modernism is on the wane and traditional materials of brick, wood and tiles are used in buildings which are contemporary, on a better scale, have good landscaping - trees and shrubs - and are generally more pleasant to live in. Who sponsors them public or private doesn't need to matter.
I could write thousands of posts on this topic but must dash to the station. But I have enough time to say that I never warmed up to New York. The scale was always hostile, too tall, too crowded, too dense. And quite ugly. Then I discovered Brooklyn. The Park Slope/Cobble Hill/Brooklyn Heights are is a real delight and a perfect urbanism for me (leaving aside its ridiculous politics). Something about the human ability to relate to scale is clearly at play here
But also manageable is a level of mixed density, with houses and midrises and even some highrises blended together, as long as there is sufficient greenery and landscaping. Quite a few European cities built extensively in this manner and I always admired the garden city effect in planning.
sadly good quality urbanism often now co-exists with terrible politics.
I find even Paris's density quite unnerving at time. I've never lived in NY and imagine I would probably be a jittering wreck soon enough.
Please avoid split infinitives. Otherwise, excellent.
Why?
Because it misplaced a modifier within the conjunction itself.
"Most of Britain’s ‘happy towns’ are also incredibly expensive"
This could indicate that the happiness is produced by high incomes rather than by architecture.
think they controlled for income in the study.
But yeah I'd be pretty happy if I owned a townhouse in Bath!
Okay, thanks. Also, you can control for income, but the effects of being surrounded by other high-income people are also part of quality of life. When the local owners complain about apartments' being built, it's not just the buildings and more traffic, but, "That kind of people will be sending their children to OUR schools!"
one obvious solution to me - and they do this in Germany - is to reserve new builds for local residents. If you take Truro in Cornwall, which has one of the highest house price to incomes in the country. even if you build 5,000 new homes, the locals are relatively poor and wouldn't be able to afford them. Londoners would mostly buy them. People might buy them if they thought their children or grandchildren would be able to own them.
This is why immigration makes house building even harder; in the long term all population increase is from immigration, so people think 'why should I lose the countryside to accommodate immigration-derived population expansion, when I didn't vote for that in the first place?'
Those are excellent points.
How does it work to build houses for local people? If the demand-pool, so to speak, is restricted, that would tend to reduce the market price for the houses, because the people with the most money are excluded from bidding. That being the case, how do you get anyone to build houses that don't cost more to build than the buyer can pay? Are they allowed to build reasonably-sized houses?
if you are building say 100 then you allow a certain number to be on sale to anyone, and reserved a certain percentage for local people (with time limits on resale). the ratio would be established so that developers can still make money. It would also depend on the size of the community. if its a fairly biggish town the locals-only one would be more than if its a very small community, in which case you're basically giving them away.
Unless the government wants to pay for it but that is unlikely right now.
Complicated.
Charles did not get enough praise for his support of traditional architecture. It is a huge facet in the identity of a nation. Without traditional architecture of a place, you could be anywhere on Earth with zero distinctions. That would be a huge tragedy.
Yes widely mocked at the time - and he was completely correct.
As a lifelong New Yorker (Manhattan to me =NYC, but I recognize that is a narrow view), I was intrigued by your article.
The most expensive apartment buildings in New York are the new ones, the ugly fingers pointing 50 stories plus in the sky.
Prewar (before 1940) buildings are generally co-ops and have become less desirable/less expensive for many reasons, including going through the crazy co-op application process and the cost and time of renovation.That said, I think the prettiest buildings in New York are the older ones, which are taller than 3-4 stories but are still human sized and well proportioned.
As well, many of these older buildings are the ones that surround Central Park, and I believe the best views of the Park are not from helicopter level, but while walking or running (not fleeing but for exercise!) through it.
<<The housing crisis is the number one problem facing British society>>
It really isn't. AI is the number one problem facing British society and every other society.
In the next 5-20 years, if AI development is not stopped, things are going to become Very Weird. Some of those Very Weird things are going to be Very Bad for society. Before the year 2050 AIs will run the world and there will be no possible way for humans to take back control. The AIs will have their own goals, which won't include caring about human beings. The AIs will control all the resources and territories that previously belonged to humans, they will eliminate any humans who are troublesome or who seem like they might become troublesome, and eventually humanity will suffer the same fate as wolves, bears and lynx suffered in the British Isles at the hands of a more intelligent species.
The "housing crisis" problem, like every other human problem, only matters in a world in which AI progress is stopped before AIs take control.
As you say, elected leaders can't even think about 11 years into the future. What about you? Can you think about 11 years into the future? It seems like you think the near future is just going to be "business as usual", even though we are currently creating machines that are becoming more intelligent every year.
Just calling it misplaced is begging the question; in the proper sense of that term. I implore you to earnestly try harder.
God save the King, and so forth.
Which rival were the Brooklyn New Englanders competing with: Manhattan, Boston, London, other?
Burroughs and Wallace portray Brooklyn, before the 1898 NYC unification, as a bastion of 'proper-Bostonian' bourgeois respectability and propriety, happy to have a bit of distance from the teeming masses in Manhattan.
https://books.google.com/books?id=mObQCwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&dq=history%20of%20new%20york%20city%20gotham&pg=PA729#v=onepage&q&f=false
May West is the best. I've long thought we should just scrap architecture as an academic subject.