Our Cities are Tyrannical. What would a Democratic City Look Like?
a concrete (no pun intended) vision of how things could be different
A Twitter follower of mine recently recommended this article to me:
The article is fairly straight-forward: exactly what you would expect from the title.
Most people do not particularly enjoy architecture built during the 20th or 21st centuries.
(It so happens that I do: I quite enjoy certain examples of Brutalism, and am a huge fan of West Coast Modernism. But — well. I am not everyone. If most people are deeply unhappy with their surroundings, that is an issue.)
The article’s core argument is as such:
One of the most infuriating aspects of contemporary architecture is its willful disdain for democracy. When people are polled, they tend to prefer older buildings to postwar buildings; very few postwar buildings make it onto lists of most treasured places. Yet architects are reluctant to build in the styles that people find more…
