Comments
thruster_fuel69 t1_j293fai wrote
People don't like ugly cities. Saved you a click.
coyotesage t1_j29zxe8 wrote
...just more mounting evidence that I don't appear to be a person. Sigh.
DearestRay t1_j2afzx6 wrote
lolol. Same. Love me some brutalism and AI art and nobody gunna tell me different.
Iridethetechnocrane t1_j2b62xb wrote
Give it a little more credit. People do not IDENTIFY with ugly cities. The result is an emotional disconnect from place, community, and being.
thruster_fuel69 t1_j2b7h3a wrote
Ah, I see. I don't identify with any city, is that abnormal?
daveescaped t1_j2dsz46 wrote
I’d express it this way; highly urbanized landscapes cause people to view their locale as transactional. I’ve lived in such places. They don’t engender any connection. You know you are probably there temporarily (you hope). People you see each day you will likely only see once and never again so no reason to treat them as fellow community members.
And personally I think this could apply to a true city as well as a suburb. Any place that stresses efficiency over community is likely to get this result. Sterility might be efficient but it doesn’t make you feel at home. I would think high density developments that cater to residents who plan to transition elsewhere soon reinforce this.
I live in Houston. Good luck finding a landscape that has looked the same for more than 50 years. And likely it hasn’t looked this long for more than 15 years. So how are you supposed to develop memories in such a place? And it isn’t attractive anyway. It’s just practical. Many US cities like Houston are planned only as a means to an end. There is not thought to how all of these very poorly built building will look in 30 years because no one is thinking in those terms.
thruster_fuel69 t1_j2e2m68 wrote
Totally, many of the poor parts of cities were built for efficiency. How many Laundromats per block of tenement buildings, efficiency like you said. I agree.
I'd just add that it's pretty clearly split by household income. Like everything else in America it boils down to class warfare. Like Maslow's pyramid, basics first pretty last. The rich get pretty, the poor live in a factory.
daveescaped t1_j2e4nr8 wrote
I completely agree. However, I think there are wealthier areas that also are becoming more and more sterile. I’ve been moving around for a while now. My company hasn’t let me stay in any one area for more than a few years. 4 states, 3 countries. But every time I move, I end up in the part of town that is upper-middle class but it has these “executive apartments” type of places that are near shopping malls and chain restaurants and freeways. They offer convenience. They have zero character. And the people you meet are like you; temporary. I was there to do a thing for a few years and then move on. No reason to get attached and nothing to cause you to become attached.
My parents were never this mobile. They found jobs and stayed put for nearly 50 years. So did our neighbors. And they didn’t go very far from where they grew up.
I agree that the poor always have it worse. But I think the sterile locales are present in all income classes. They are just far more pervasive for the poor maybe.
thruster_fuel69 t1_j2e5eqj wrote
Yeah, I live in an idyllic neighborhood of friendly families and decorated yards. I have to drive a bit before I hit ugly, but its there in strip malls etc.
Would be very interesting to see cities put money into architecture and measure change. That would be very hard to prove to the public though, as these types of benefits take multiple cycles to be measured.
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Hrmbee OP t1_j28ta3m wrote
Abstract:
>Urban expansion is generating unprecedented homogenization of landscapes across the world. This uniformization of urban forms brings along dramatic environmental, social, and health problems. Reverting such processes requires activating people’s sense of place, their feeling of caring for their surroundings, and their community engagement. While emotions are known to have a modulating effect on behavior, their role in urban transformation is unknown. Drawing on large cognitive-psychological experiments in two countries, we demonstrate for the first time that urban homogenization processes lower people’s affective bounds to places and ultimately their intentions to engage with their neighbourhoods. The dulled emotional responses in peri-urban areas compared to urban and rural areas can be explained by lower social cohesion and place attachment. The findings highlight the significance of considering emotions in shaping just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient cities.
This is some interesting research especially for those engaged in the work of city and community building in all its various forms. It is important to consider these kinds of psychological and social factors when designing our communities, but the difficulty of communicating the importance of these issues to the broader public remains a challenge that still needs to be overcome in many instances.