American Cities are UGLY: Why We Don’t Build Nice Places Anymore

have you ever been somewhere and thought wow this place is beautiful maybe it's the find Details In the architecture the sounds of people chatting and enjoying themselves or simply the energy and atmosphere the place gives off but you might have also wondered why are American cities so ugly it's the cookie cutter sameness of suburban neighborhoods and the commercial strips surrounded by parking lots chain stores and gas stations of course there are many exceptions but the vast majority of our cities are forgettable and soulless places places you only go to if you have to and leave as soon as possible and if this is all you've known how can anything be different what may not be apparent is that all these places are designed very intentionally there's a hidden set of rules and laws that ultimately Define how every aspect of our cities look so why are some places so beautiful and why do most American cities suck and when I say beauty I don't just mean visual appeal but if architecture and urban design reflects our unique values and identity what do places like this say about us in the late 1800s cities were rapidly industrializing making them crowded unsanitary and dangerous when referring to the urban slums of New York the 1894 tenan House Commission called them centers of disease poverty Vice and crime thus modernist planning emerged in the early 20th century partly as a way to solve these issues the idea was that form follows function or in other words function and efficiency were more important than visual appeal steel glass and concrete became the primary materials and buildings would no longer have decorative details or reference historical architecture modernists believe that there is a one best way of building after the second world war America was faced with a huge housing crisis thus modernist planning became popular as a way to mass-produced housing in order to avoid the decaying cities of the Past new neighborhoods were built far away way on the outskirts of the Cities ukian zoning laws were used to fully separate residential commercial and industrial buildings other laws controlled how far back a building had to be from the street how big the lot was and even the size of the building itself the layout of the streets changed from a simple grid to a garden pattern full of winding curves and cats the combination of all these laws made these suburbs car Centric meaning residents had to drive in order to get anywhere and this proliferation of cars completely reshaped our cities since suburbanites had to commute downtown we needed to completely revamp all our infrastructure to support all the cars firstly we needed highways the Federal Highway Act of 1956 resulted in the interstate system we know today and was partly meant to move military vehicles in case of an invasion this was heavily pushed by the Secretary of Defense Charles E Wilson who was also the former president's of General Motors so of course highways were plowed right through cities targeting minority neighborhoods and destroying every building in its path not even Eisenhower expected this to happen of course it didn't stop there because throughout the decades as traffic increased highways roads and streets all had to be expanded destroying even more buildings even to this day cities like Houston are spending billions of dollars to expand their highways which will destroy hundreds of homes and businesses this is why streets in our cities look like highways they're designed to improve traffic flow as much as possible making them extremely wide and ominous even elements like trees are seen as obstructions that a driver might hit so they have to be removed from the clear Zone another consequence of car dependency was the sheer amount of parking we had to build everywhere it's estimated that there are over a billion parking spaces in America or four spaces for every car this is why UCLA Professor Donald shup wrote a 700 page book about the history of parking and why it's so stupid laws such as minimum parking requirements were implemented to accommodate the huge demand for off street parking these requirements Force every type of building to provide a certain amount of parking the problem was there is no accurate or scientific way of determining how much parking a certain business should need so these requirements were entirely based off of guesses and pseudo science sh explains that cities would literally guess how much parking should be needed otherwise they would copy other cities who probably also just guessed parking requirements were thus based off of very arbitrary assumptions such as one parking space for every 2500 gallons of water at a swimming pool every 10 nuns in a nunnery or for every tumbling apparatus in a tumbling Center planners would decide the amount of parking based on Peak demand meaning we massively overbuilt how much parking is actually needed on a typical basis in the words of Donald chup it's unfair to have cities where parking is free for cars and housing is expensive for people but all this free parking comes at a cost which is reflected in all the products you buy so even if you don't drive you're still subsidizing these giant ugly Pavements everywhere this also means that parking minimums make it very expensive for small businesses to operate their stores so the only businesses that can afford this in the long term are large companies this is partly why America is mostly dominated by either corporate bot stores and fast food chains or expensive luxury condos and hotels small mom and pop shops make a street look nice because they provide individual flare and unique character to attract customers they set up attractive window displays and design interesting storefronts big corporations on the other hand builder stores to be standardized and uniform department stores Power Center and fast food chains are bland and soulless they bsy and lithi it'ses that same everywhere the combination of all these vast parking lots and highways left a tremendous irreversible star on our cities when you look at old photographs of American cities you can see just how much destruction had unfolded blocks of old beautiful architecture and bustling neighborhoods were completely wiped today you would never know that they had even existed so despite all these laws and regulations this is not to say we should get rid of them humans like order and structure we have a tendency to organize and straighten things out too much Freedom would be chaotic take for example the callon wal City but on the flip side too much order results in blandness and monotony like the Apartments built across Asia and the Soviet Union and of course American suburbs what we need is a m between the two an organized chaos the historic Canal houses in Amsterdam are limited in width and color palettes but they vary in height and each house has its own unique decorative elements many streets in South America like this one in Rife Brazil maintain a similar form but allow each building to have different bright colors similarly the old Victorian style houses in San Francisco are nearly identical but each house has its own pastel color and have slight variations in the patterns and details cities also need to be Lively and compact it's no surprise that the most attractive places are full of life we can see people dining in outdoor patios Busters playing music and Street vendors selling food of course none of this is possible when your city is spread out with monotonous suburbs and giant parking lots or full of dangerous highspeed traffic now don't get me wrong this isn't just a suburb issue many North American downtowns are completely devoid of any life this was of course a result of running highways through them and bulldozing half of it to build parking today our downtowns primarily serve office workers who commute from the suburbs rather than being pedestrian oriented spaces that are comfortable to spend time in all you find here are bland corporate office Towers or parking garages and even though there's thousands of people who work here they're all obscured Behind The Bleak facades of The Office Buildings many Asian cities are similar in that they have been sanely large roads full of cars and sky scrapers but they balance it out with huge pedestrian spaces and shopping districts not to mention they have amazing public transit so most of their population aren't dependent on driving the design of our streets in Town Square should be viewed as an outdoor room an extension of our homes in his book walkable City Jeff spec mentions that from an evolutionary standpoint humans need to be spatially contained by the walls of buildings we need a clear view to see our prey but also have our Flames protected from predators the ecologist Eugene Odum argues that the idea habitat for humans weren't open grasslands or dense forests but rather the forest edge where you have both a clear distant View and physical enclosure thus you'll find that nice places use buildings trees or other objects to break up the space and create a sense of enclosure this parking lot in Beijing cleverly uses trees to break up the space contrast that to the strip mall parking lot which feels empty and depressing the key with this is maintaining proportions many Suburban neighborhoods have excessively wide streets in large setbacks which throws off the balance and feels disproportionate this is partly why the suburbs can feel so limal and creepy of course there are also wide spaces like St Peter Square in the Vatican or Palace Square in St Petersburg which can feel disproportionate too but these only work because they're pedestrianized and not full of cars this is also how you create those Coy intimate Alleyways that everyone is so drawn to such as the Via deari in Rome or Hill in Boston they create a sense of mystery and a feeling of being lost of course these places would be completely illegal to build today due to our zoning laws and parking requirements another crucial aspect is how the design and architecture of a place reflects its unique values in identity brues and Belgium is known for their medieval architecture Jaipur India is known for its pink historical buildings and Rio de Janeiro is known for its Beach culture but what are the suburbs of Houston known for high highways and parking lots when you look at how beautiful cities around the world are designed they all follow the same traditional development pattern everything is at a human scale and within walking distance residential and Commercial uses were mixed together the architecture was designed to adapt to the unique climate or geography and building materials reflected the environment of where the city was located American cities follow this traditional pattern as well you can see remnants of this in Old Street Car suburbs or the historic Main streets found in almost every town but when everything everywhere looks the same we lose Community solidarity in our connection to the places we live I think the best example of this is Hawaii this strong Town's podcast discusses how out of place modern Suburban development lets on these islands and how hard it is to maintain this infrastructure in such a unique climate Hawaii is a bunch of volcanic rots in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with completely different cultures and geography but the same Suburban neighborhoods you find everywhere else is built here fortunately many cities are moving in the right direction this map shows all the cities that have remove parking minimums either from the city center or from the entire city completely many are also starting to reform their zoning laws to allow more mid use development and higher density it's interesting to see the effects of this on newer developments here's a midu development in a brand new suburb near Toronto and when I say brand new I mean it was literally still under construction when when I was there filming storefronts are right up against the sidewalk and there's nice streetscaping with trees and flowers even though it's still boty and Char dependent it's much better than having a massive parking lot in front removing highways from a city center is also shown to improve quality of life traffic and of course Beauty here's what it looked like when Soul removed one of their major freeways and here's Boston when they buried the i93 you can even go a step further and remove cars all together Montreal has been pedestrianized a few of their major streets during the summer and you can really see what a difference it makes here's another example in Denver Colorado or Coral Gables in Florida the modernist idea that form follows function is sort of ironic when you consider that traditional development was meant to be functional beauty is function when the design of our cities reflect our unique environments culture values and the needs of our community it becomes beautiful this is why so many cities all around the world including some in North America are so appealing to tourists but no one really gets excited to visit Winnipeg Manitoba now of course not every city has to be some exceptional tourist attraction but when you design a city for the people that live there you create places that people actually care about places that aren't soulless and demoralizing places that are beautiful

Channel: flurfdesign

Views: 206,102

Keywords: flurfdesign, america is ugly, why american cities are ugly, american suburbs are ugly, the loss of architectural beauty, modernist architecture, why we dont build beautiful buildings anymore, americas ugly housing developments, the high cost of free parking, american cities are poorly designed, american vs european suburbs

Id: 6TIPkGpuPmE

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023