Why Every City Feels the Same Now

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/08/why-every-city-feels-same-now/615556/

by pattusk • 6 years ago

138 251 6 years ago

theatlantic.com

bestouff• 6 years ago

At least in Europe they don't. At all.

Toine• 6 years ago

For now.

Mediterraneo102• 6 years ago

Even Europe has seen a great deal of architectural convergence. The Nordic style, for example, spread from Finland to the surrounding countries, and if one has known the Baltic countries since the 1990s, one marvels at how in the post-Soviet era they have begun to converge architecturally, and in terms of certain aspects of urban planning, towards the Nordic countries.

tokai• 6 years ago

The Nordic Style

Do you mean Nordic Classicism or Funkis?

Markoff7• 6 years ago

within Europe I would tend to agree, if you stay in city centres - it's just old buildings with churches, narrow streets and cobblestones, you could hardly distinguish the countries if it weren't for language, which makes sense considering how compact Europe is

but if you compare European, African and East Asian city you can clearly see differences

riffraff2• 6 years ago

it's just old buildings with churches, narrow streets and cobblestones

Just to talk of a single country: Rome has its kind of old buildings and churches, which is different from Florence, which is different from Venice, which is different from Milan or Trieste.

Even the cobblestones are different!

amelius• 6 years ago

Everything feels the same now.

Websites, they all look like they used Bootstrap.

Smartphones, well they basically are the same as everybody has the latest iPhone.

Fashion. Everybody wears jeans.

rorykoehler3• 6 years ago

It's interesting that this is the outcome of capitalism considering it was always a point used to ridicule communism. That and the deep state espionage which we've also got now.

AnthonyMouse• 6 years ago

It's the outcome of having centralized power. Markets require competition to operate. We erected barriers to competition through regulation and lack of antitrust enforcement, so markets consolidated. Just enough competition to put up a fig leaf and claim they have some, not enough to actually be effective.

The entire dichotomy is a fraud. The problem is centralization, not whether the centralized power is a state or a corporation.

the-dude4• 6 years ago

I don't.

jiggawatts• 6 years ago

I was a vocal atheist back in my university days, but ironically most of my friends were highly devout Christians... studying Physics of all things.

I was trying to explain to one particular such Christian friend that the problem with religion is that "The fish is the last to know that it lives in water". That is: it seems obvious that "Our religion is the one true religion" only if you hadn't travelled and realised that everyone thinks that, but doesn't agree with you. In a context of a Christian country, a Christian upbringing, and a Christian government, this is not so obvious.

She disagreed, and said very firmly that she does notice such consistent trends. "I would know if I lived in water."

We were in a packed lecture hall. In reply, I said simply:

"Everyone single person in this room is wearing jeans, except me."

Frost1x• 6 years ago

I'm of the opinion that optimization is a natural enemy of variety and diversity. Our businesses, economy, and more encroachingly, culture, are dictated by the requirement for many to optimize on cost and ROI. As such, we converge on all but a few well established optimized processes we essentially copy and repeat. Occasionally "disruptive" strategies emerge and find a new, better cost/ROI optimization solution.

Variety and diversity on the other hand need to be able to discard cost/ROI focused optimization. They need to be inefficient/"wasteful", they need to take time and more resources because they're new or their fundamental variance that makes them appealing are defined by their very state of being sub-optimal. They need to be able to fail and iterate, not fail and die.

I'm a proponent of optimizing on certain factors like cost, time, space and so forth under certain conditions, but I think we need to stand back as humans and be mindful of processes we seek to optimize and ask if some of them are factors we really want to optimize on. Do we want more square footage so we can cram another person or piece of furniture in or do we want to change our target optimization to include aesthetic appeal, variety, mental health... and so forth. We have our priorities way off as a society, I'd argue, and those priorities are being less of a choice and more of a mandate for many.

Right now we're on a runaway freight train across society to optimize on cost and ignore everything else. This pandemic is sure to expedite that problem with the economic toll its taken. That cost saving/ROI optimization strategy, in our economic system, will "win" most times over other choices. If we are able to relax the financial constraints of many, then we can use that slack to focus on other factors that aren't always cost and profit driven.

blablablerg• 6 years ago

It must be right? Just like a mathematical optimization which looks for just one value for x (assuming a global optimum) and discarding the rest of the values (the 'diversity' in x). You see the same thing in pop music, which is optimized for popularity by the music industry. These days pop music sounds much more alike than say pop from the 60s or 70s. Same thing with athletes, in their sport there isn't much variety in physique. Under the neoliberal/capitalist doctrine, which tries to turn everything into a competition, the winners take all and the winners tend to be optimized for the same qualities.

randcraw4• 6 years ago

Doesn't that question simply devolve into, "How much more are you willing to pay for variety and diversity?"

Shopping at boutique stores certainly offer a more memorable shopping experience, better dining, or more engaging products than Amazon or Walmart, but at substantially greater cost/risk. When efficiency/safety becomes primary among your desiderata, variety and diversity will suffer.

This is the exact conundrum covered well in Kunstler's "The Geography of Nowhere" which bemoaned the social cost arising from city/village design that was optimized to serve too narrow a set of priorities, thereby eliminating opportunity to experience and share common spaces in more than one way.

volume• 6 years ago

What you describe are the downsides or limitations of Stage Orange from Spiral Dynamics. That's just another model, though about how societies evolve over time.

icebraining• 6 years ago

Do we want more square footage so we can cram another person or piece of furniture in

But is this what's happening? As far as I know, and particularly in the US, square footage is increase despite the reduction in the number of people per household. And are people really cramming stuff with furniture nowadays?

It feels really strange to hear the complaint that the US is optimizing on cost, when from my side of the pond, US lifestyle feels if anything extremely wasteful.

sailfast• 6 years ago

There are a lot of words in this article that are not really important to the argument so it takes awhile to get to the actual less link-bait conclusion.

TL;DR: architecture is another means of control and we shouldn’t let corporate architecture (headquarters) or current hegemonic / imperial designs take over the local uniqueness because it is acceptable but instead embrace local architecture. The article highlights some places under threat, and some good examples and ends with a plea to avoid blotting our our current desirable places that are unique with hegemonic buildings. [many many examples included]

Bedon292• 6 years ago

Its interesting. I don't have experience with a large variety of cities, but Seattle and DC I am quite familiar with. They do not feel the same to me at all. Lots of history and monuments, and there are still pretty strict height restrictions in DC. Just don't have any of that feel in Seattle. The primary commonality is the horrible traffic. But, if you go to Bellevue and Tyson's Corner they feel the same. Perhaps DC is unique? Perhaps I am biased to the region I grew up in? How do other feel DC and Seattle compare?

chapium• 6 years ago

I think DC is the exception here. Most cities are cookie cutter buildings downtown, with the same restaurants. Out towards the suburbs its cookie cutter strip malls and the same restaurants. Oklahoma and Texas feel a little more unique since they tend to have a local set of franchises.

leetcrew2• 6 years ago

DC is a fairly unique american city, in part due to the height restriction and weird layout of the major arteries.

I often don't feel like I'm in an actual city when I walk around in DC. when I'm not right next to a monument or government building, it feels more like a particularly dense suburb. if someone else is driving, I might not notice that we've left silver spring and entered the city proper.

Legogris2• 6 years ago

Can't speak of DC but I feel that even culturally, large cities have more in common with each other than they do with the sparesly populated regions in their own countries.

London, Paris, NYC, Tokyo, Seoul, KL, Singapore, Cape Town, Shanghai, Buenos Aires... Same same but different.

wenc• 6 years ago

I've visited/lived in 7/10 of those cities, and really appreciated the fact that retail and public infra look the same between cities. In that sense, there's a certain "interoperability" (much like how most airports around the world work the same). It only takes a day or so to get used to how the public transit works and how to buy things. I could drop into a new city and learn how to get around in no time.

(NY's subway was the least intuitive and took the longest to get used to -- it's complicated by inconsistencies like express trains, lack of electronic signage on multiuse platforms, doors not opening in certain cars for certain stops in lower Manhattan, etc. -- but even so there was a method behind the madness.)

However, once you venture outside the central business districts/downtowns and into the neighborhoods, things start looking very different. It's in the neighborhoods that one finds unique cultures.

Chicago for instance: the Loop is nice and all, but the character of Chicago is really in the 77 neighborhoods around the city. NYC's cultural hotspots are in boroughs like Queens.

I would say most cities retain their culture in their neighborhoods, not in their CBDs/downtowns.

KineticLensman• 6 years ago

Rome is an exception to the others. The centre is low-rise and packed with stunning ancient Roman buildings. Compared with, say, Milan. The suburbs are much more similar, though.

culopatin2• 6 years ago

I'm from Buenos Aires and now live in the US and travelled most of the country on wheels, and there is some truth to what you say. I feel more comfortable moving around in NYC and Boston than I do in any other medium city of the us (Miami or Jacksonville for exapmle).

What feels right is that things are not manicured down to fakeness. Everything is dirty because it gets used, some kind of yucky thing covering the whole city, noise, things that are compromise because "well you know, it's an old big city", and most importantly, people WALKING.

The people walking component is to be what changes everything. Sidewalks, store locations, transportation, the vibe of the city seems to be related to how many people are actually walking around you to go somewhere, and not because they drove there to do something.

wycy• 6 years ago

I agree that DC seems more unique to me than other cities. It's done a good job of retaining it's historical architecture almost everywhere. The Navy Yard is the only area I can think of that's switched over to the modern glass style, but even there the height restrictions result in buildings that look a bit different from the glass skyscrapers of other cities.

Spooky232• 6 years ago

Both DC and Seattle are old cities where growth has happened recently. So the new build is shaped or at least influenced by the surroundings.

It's easiest to look at new places, or rapid growth places since 1960. You need to look regional vs. "the city". The areas around Atlanta are a great example. The area around the Atlanta Braves stadium exemplifies modern development -- a shopping mall posing as a city, with Comcast, a theatre and the baseball stadium as anchor tenants. The assembly square area just north of Boston is a similar thing.

Philosophically, on one extreme you have a real "organic" city like NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc. On the other you have a corporate campus or malls that started popping up in the 1950s and 1960s. Modern development requires much more capital, so you end up with bland campus/mall environments controlled by one big entity. Once developers scale out, you end up with more vacancies, etc as it makes business sense to leave storefronts vacant due to tax law and other factors.

Even outside of big developments, modern buildings turn out to be a hybrid. End users don't own the buildings, so the REIT/leaseholder/developer wants it to look as prestigious as the market demand as cheap as possible. So lots of cheap glass and stucco to quack like a nice building. Usually the fittings, doors, etc are garbage. Best example of this is a medical arts building. The nicer ones will have a weird sculpture, but everything else in public areas are the cheapest available materials from the carpet tile to the elevators. CFOs managing a portfolio of 2,000 buildings see value in saving $0.08/square foot on carpet tile.

blaser-waffle5• 6 years ago

I'm from the same places. Definitely some overlaps, but IMO the big difference is the weather and the culture. All them security clearance types right next to one of the worst ghettos in the US vs. Seattle's Portlandia-light + Amazon/Boeing/Sbux/MS money all over the place. SLU is sooo much nicer than a lot of DC, save for maybe parts of Georgetown.

cowmoo7282• 6 years ago

I recently did a cross country drive and there are some cities that stand out, but a whole lot that blend in. There were moments where I was looking around unsure if I was in Nashville, Denver, Dallas, Phoenix, Kansas City, or Des Moines. Anywhere that has a renovated or new "hip downtown" area with wood framed 1+4 (1 floor for retail and 4 of "luxury" apartments) painted in bright Ikea colors.

UncleOxidant2• 6 years ago

The Geography of Nowhere https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-L...

dublinben• 6 years ago

The industry jargon for that building style is:

“5 over 1” or “one-plus-five”: wood-framed construction, which contain apartments and is known as Type 5 in the International Building Code, over a concrete base, which usually contains retail or commercial space, or parking structures, known as Type 1.

https://www.curbed.com/2018/12/4/18125536/real-estate-modern...

shoes_for_thee• 6 years ago

Yeah... I just can't agree with the premise of this article

I've spent sizable chunks of my life in DC, NYC, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Barcelona, and Bangkok. These cities all feel wildly different to me.

randcraw4• 6 years ago

But a few decades ago, cities like DC and Philly were much more diverse and interesting than they are now, at the cost of diminished safety and tidiness, of course.

Back in the 1980s, DC especially used to sport a warren of one-off ma and pa hole-in-the-wall shops packed into low rent enclaves found all round the city. But a couple decades back those neighborhoods were bought up by ambitious well-heeled developers and turned into chic malls of boutique shoppes that attract only yuppies. Now only homogeneous gentrification survives.

dfxm12• 6 years ago

There's so much more to how a city feels than its architecture.

Though I do agree that the International Style is a bit overdone.

Markoff7• 6 years ago

no it doesn't, I fail to see how is Prague same as Beijing vs KL vs New Delhi for instance unless you stay in CBD like author of this piece and I am pretty sure it would feel very different also in Africa

exabrial• 6 years ago

On the same note, why is every city council obsessed with attracting tourism? For whatever reason it's seen as the holy grail of industry.

Markoff7• 6 years ago

I guess people in Barcelona, Venice and Prague would disagree, this is really the best side effect of coronavirus despite the loss of income

I will rather have less frequent public transport to save money the whole city (center) occupied by tourists

xapata• 6 years ago

Paris is best in July and August, when the locals leave.

scsilver• 6 years ago

"Amity is a summer town, we need summer dollars."

Spooky232• 6 years ago

Easy. Tourism generates sales tax revenue, keeps storefronts occupied and employs people.

ForHackernews3• 6 years ago

It's relatively non-polluting and leads to growth in amenities that can also be enjoyed by locals.

mc32• 6 years ago

On the other hand it requires travel and is based on consumerist culture and selfie assertion “I was there”. We could go to the extreme and qualify it as a type of “appropriation” if we wanted because it’s ephemeral and not immersive.

pessimizer• 6 years ago

Middle-class tourist travel is responsible for something like 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe you meant that it was locally non-polluting? That jet fuel and gasoline burning doesn't pollute the tourist destinations much more than everyplace else, although it pollutes more than almost anything else.

edit: changed 20% to 8%. Removed "IIRC."

https://www.carbonbrief.org/tourism-responsible-for-8-of-glo...

lordnacho• 6 years ago

Naive economics: it's good for us when foreigners come here, give us money, and then leave.

goalieca• 6 years ago

The services industry is highly sought after in general. It is very labour dependant rather than industrial. With tourism, it cannot be off-shored. Plus, increased foot traffic brings vibrancy to the city. More arts and culture, parks, museums, restaurants, etc.

philwelch5• 6 years ago

I would add that it’s also seemingly within the grasp of a city council. Economic hubs will naturally emerge for reasons outside the control of local government, and once established, local government can’t always succeed in sustaining them (eg Detroit) if the private industries there struggle.

There are counterexamples to this, but mainly as a result of national and not local policy (Shenzhen, Wolfsburg).

Another interesting example of an industry that local governments can influence is filmmaking. Georgia and Vancouver both have huge amounts of film and TV production due to local policies.

OminousWeapons• 6 years ago

They want job growth but building up a sustainable knowledge based service sector (and to a lesser degree) a skilled manufacturing sector is really hard. You need high quality universities, some mechanism to attract talented people, a thoughtful tax structure, multiple large companies willing to relocate for bootstrapping, infrastructure for startups, and an industry that isn't highly centralized around existing hubs (you're not going to be the biotech place when Boston and SF already are, for example).

Building up a tourism sector to generate jobs is trivial in comparison and it's a idea everyone can wrap their heads around without any specific domain knowledge.

QuesnayJr• 6 years ago

If you think about it, it's a weird consumerist way to think about buildings -- what's important about a building is why I, the tourist, thinks of it, and not the people who have to use it every day. Most people don't spend their time going from hotel to hotel not knowing where they are, so buildings aren't built to keep those people from being bored.

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

What is really consumerist about it is that it is the ultimate first world problem in treating minor inconveniences as grand oppression and demanding the world change how it operates alienated, smuggly alienated from the realities of production and calling themselves enlightened for it.

Get a disgruntled real estate developer with a few drinks in them to lower inhibitions and demand make less homogenous housing. Prepare for an earsplitting rant about every last detail they need to go through from economies of scale, cost of getting it, to building codes to zoning approval processes and meetings as they lack and the utter presumptious cluelessness of the demand from someone practically irrelevant to the whole process.

doonesbury• 6 years ago

This article explains why travel in a lot of the US (born and raised here) is not interesting except for New Orleans and maybe Austin, or SF and Berkeley. There's a despair here that I bet the French or Portuguese have a perfect word for.

I hope old Europe doesn't fully go this way because it's my favorite place to go. It's oldness is very soothing which is a sensibility or modality I got from my father.

leetcrew2• 6 years ago

I'll concede that most US cities are probably not worth traveling to for the architecture alone. most US cities I've visited do have some hidden gems though. it's not stuff you'd easily find researching for a vacation though. when possible, I try to stay with a friend who already lives in the place I want to travel too. I've always been pleasantly surprised by what a city has to offer when I travel this way.

blaser-waffle5• 6 years ago

There's a despair here that I bet the French or Portuguese have a perfect word for.

Why those languages? I'd imagine that kind of dispair would be the specialty of German or some East European language.

ricohboy• 6 years ago

It's a different "flavor" of despair then what you're probably thinking those languages might have

culopatin2• 6 years ago

I've traveled most of the US on wheels and I feel this. I have an intense urge to take my oldest car on a long unplanned roadtrip just for the adventure of doing it, but I never go because 'Where would I go? It's all an interstate and a bunch of nothing new". Yes, there are small towns, but even through those you have to drive 15hs to find something that stands out.

What they don't tell you in movies about the American roadtrip in a convertible is that it's really long no matte where you go and really boring for the most part.

robocat• 6 years ago

I travelled using a 50cc motorbike from France to Istanbul.

Avoiding motorways was necessary, but it turned out to be an amazing improvement. I now actively try to travel using just back roads and I try not to be in a hurry to reach a destination. I now find travel is best done slowly, unoptimally, via the less usual routes, and that the journey is often the best part (especially when travelling with a good travel buddy).

205guy2• 6 years ago

That's what I thought too until I found this guy's website: http://bigdogadventures.com/

He has a Honda CB500X and Husqvarna 701 (I don't know much about motorcycles, but I do know that's not the same as sibling comment's 50cc) and he rides all over the US on the backroads and dirt roads. It's full of local cafés, covered bridges, ghost towns, remote mountain roads, and the like. He takes photos and videos and documents the whole thing on an old-fashioned website. It really made me want to ride a motorcycle.

kyuudou4• 6 years ago

When you're just a tourist, you'll often be limited to tourist traps or other locations that are aimed specifically at people who are just superficially passing through.

How can anyone expect to see the real "soul" of a place just... by driving by?

thatfrenchguy• 6 years ago

"C'est déprimant ici" is what I usually say when I enter any midsize US city.

I don't see European cities going this way, people care about architecture there. Just look south of the border how Mexico has a lot of beautiful cities.

jjcon• 6 years ago

Funny - as someone in Europe that has spent time in the US I kinda see the opposite. I wonder if some psychological biases are at play here.

To me my home country feels all very regular and the US has strong styles to where I could pick out an American town from most other countries. But to you the opposite is probably true, USA towns seem all very normal and regular to you.

tjs8rj• 6 years ago

I can't help but feel like this is a result of capitalist optimization, melting pot culture, and declining religious adherents among other factors. In other words: the cities are reflections of the individual level, where diversity in all it's meanings continue to decrease. Much of the biggest differences between the Midwest and the South or the East Coast and the West are summed up to first order economically - some areas are cheaper, have fewer restaurants and jobs, and vice versa. There's little serious cultural difference between these areas relative to the "interesting areas".

Homogenization begins at the people level, and America is increasingly homogenized at the surface level.

ghaff• 6 years ago

To the degree that there is a certain sameness, at least in the US, the other thing that probably contributes is chain stores/restaurants. It's more pronounced in some places than others but both urban shopping malls and places on the street overlap a great deal from city to city.

bluGill6• 6 years ago

Our needs as humans are mostly the same, as are our wants. Thus chains to fill the same needs the same way everywhere.

heydenberk• 6 years ago

I'm less concerned with central business districts having the same architectural form. That's clearly function following form to some extent; people who work in those places want space and light, and as much of it as possible in a small area. I'm more concerned about the Brooklyn-ification of everything. Interior aesthetics, menu items, playlists, etc., are converging in places like Saratoga Springs and Omaha in a way that really dulls the sense of place you used to get traveling America.

aaron6952• 6 years ago

Obviously it's the internet.

But the internet also allows one to go deeper into cities.

So at the moment we are still breaking even.

In part poverty helps keep things different, this to is disappearing. The destruction of culture is an important part of progress.

This is seen as unfortunate for the viewers on the outside but swapping a ramshackle house that floods for a brick box that works and access to McDonald's is a godsend for the occupants. Pre internet it might have been a local burger joint.

Now the (physical) Irish pub delivered in a shipping container has gone to a (designed) shipping container Irish pub.

blaser-waffle5• 6 years ago

The destruction of culture is an important part of progress.

You lost me here.

This is seen as unfortunate for the viewers on the outside but swapping a ramshackle house that floods for a brick box that works and access to McDonald's is a godsend for the occupants.

Do some reading about all of the terrible things large fast food conglomerates have done to our food supply. Cheap food is easy to get in places like India -- rice and dahl for what would be pennies in USD -- and eradicating their culture via McDicks benefits no one.

Now the (physical) Irish pub delivered in a shipping container has gone to a (designed) shipping container Irish pub.

This sounds like all of the worst parts of Irish drinking culture, inside a metal container, and without any of the things that make Irish pubs appealing, such as old crackpot sods who've sat at the same stool for ~20+ years.

aaron6952• 6 years ago

and eradicating their culture via McDicks benefits no one.

It's up to you, but when I stopped calling Microsoft M$ it allowed me to mature a little in the software world and be able to critically look at things. It sounds silly, but for me it worked.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6185/is-m-for-micro...

helen___keller2• 6 years ago

This is a little ranty so it's difficult at a skim to get the core arguments of the author down

But the main call to action seems to be to preserve local culture, architecture, and design, rather than letting the world become a homogenized corporate sameness enforced by hegemonic powers.

A noble goal, but not one that's really actionable. The architectural sameness spreads for the reason most architecture spreads, which is practicality. Ultimately the people with deep pockets build and buy, and those people are influenced by current trends and what is most practical (affordable and featureful).

You can show me the most beautiful architecture in the world, and I'll show you a builder creating a bastardized version of it with 30% more square feet.

The mcmansion with 30% more square feet makes the sale.

Spivak2• 6 years ago

Collective action, especially purchase preferences, are notoriously hard to change but that's where the action comes from. The trend of putting every dollar into square footage, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, didn't come from nowhere. They are easily quantifiable metrics about a house that sorta-kinda-if-you-squint give you an impression of livability and they're what every house searching tool gives users to filter on and $/sq. ft is the most prominently displayed metric for "value." Worse, even if you don't care about playing stupid games, you still likely have to play if you ever want to sell your house.

Changing how we evaluate the quality of a house changes how they're built.

helen___keller2• 6 years ago

That's true. I've been looking at housing a lot because I'm hoping to buy next spring, since my wife and I finally just finished saving enough for a down payment.

I've started considering it a "smell", if you will, when a recently-constructed single family home is in the range of 2800-3500 square feet. Almost inevitably, I look at more detailed pictures on the floor plan and layout and see all sorts of weird choices - a little "half office" right at the top of the stairs not even in its own room (just like, an empty space). Questionably shaped rooms that interact strangely with the roof. And so on.

Additionally, my personal preference is not even to have that much space - I'm nearly content with 1000sqft for a family of 3, what could I do with 3 times that much? - but I must confess that I do play the value-per-sqft game without meaning to when I'm comparing a 1500 sqft against a 2000 sqft home.

Gravityloss• 6 years ago

There's the universal "not invented here" syndrome though. Often I find a lot of good ideas, proven in practice - that simply can not be taken to use somewhere else.

skohan2• 6 years ago

If you want nice architecture, it basically has to be legislated. The neighborhood I grew up in is full of beautiful, unique homes, but this is only because there was a law on the books that no 2 homes on the same block could use the same floor-plan or facade, and each house had to be designed independently by an architect. That plus aggressive rules about how homes and properties have to be maintained.

It's a great place to live, but it's not without its cost. Surely it would be more efficient to print out a bunch of template homes, but if you want distinctive architecture you have to prioritize it.

specialist• 6 years ago

Ya, OP is wisdom-free whinge fest.

From the OP:

"Historically, political and economic dominance have dictated building styles."

Well, ya. But what of the material and technical?

I'm very interested in differences. Yayaya, everything's the same. Hegemony, "kids these days", and other old saws.

But things are also different. If you look long enough, close enough.

Why?

Even in the small, differences are really very interesting, can have far reaching impacts.

I've been slowly remodeling my house, built in the 50s. The 30 years I've owned this house, the available materials, technologies, and products have greatly changed. Frankly, it's hard for a noob casual like me to keep up.

But even with my limited awareness, I can see how each new innovation impacts new construction. For better or worse, depending on one's esthetics.

These differences percolate out.

One of the few perks of getting older is the opportunity to see the changes on a longer time scale.

philwelch5• 6 years ago

This is true-ish. Building techniques have a lot of regional factors. How much rainfall do you get? Does the ground freeze? Is the ground dry and solid enough for basements? Do you need to worry about heating, cooling, or both? Humidity? There are a lot of practical reasons for architecture to differ from place to place even today.

At the same time, materials are more homogenous because more of them are engineered and shipped across the country, so that contributes to some homogeniety, as does the media environment.

the-dude4• 6 years ago

Haven't read the article, but here in Europe I see more McDonalds, Starbucks, Subways and UberEats in my own city as times goes by.

I hate it.

edit: I forgot the KFC and BurgerKing. WTF is Kentucky Fried Chicken doing in the most northern city of NL?

blaser-waffle5• 6 years ago

COVID is gonna kill the small local joints. Large chains, or well-entrenched local places are the only ones that will survive. Over time, they take over.

Post-COVID is going to look like a cyberpunk dystopia.

randcraw4• 6 years ago

Probably true, but will that dystopia persist indefinitely? I doubt it. Yes many iconoclasts will lose their small business in the next year, but a couple years thereafter I suspect new gainsayers will arise. They may be fewer or farther flung geographically than before. But with some of the other likely consequents of COVID like a long-term rise in remote work and less commuting, more funky restaurants are likely to pop up in less expensive enclaves where more of us prefer to live and can better afford to set up funky shops of our own. It's still hard to predict the future.

michaelcampbell2• 6 years ago

Or the set from "Idiocracy"

jstepka• 6 years ago

I wonder how much the locals thought the same thing when the Dutch East India company setup shop.

What goes around, comes around.

the-dude4• 6 years ago

I can't downvote you, if I could I would.

Do you really think this is something I deserve because I am Dutch?

jolesf• 6 years ago

“America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

blaser-waffle5• 6 years ago

"At least we're not Detroit!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM

jessaustin• 6 years ago

Haha, like NYC and SF are so different.

bartread• 6 years ago

I think the fundamental error here is to think this is in any way a new phenomenon. This line, in particular, holds the key:

Others evolved over the centuries: Islamic architecture encompasses both Moorish horseshoe arches and the turquoise domes of Uzbekistan, but the unified features such as minarets and geometric ornaments tell you these are lands conquered and converted by Muslim empires.

(Emphasis mine)

This architectural homogenisation has always happened to some extent except that, in the past, its sphere of influence was limited to the area of a certain empire, nation state, or religion. Nowadays the actors are powerful corporations with global reach, and hence the homogenisation is global in scope rather than more localised.

There may be a solution to this but I don't think calling for a preservation of local architectural style and culture is it, because it's not dealing with the root cause of the problem.

That may go back to valuing function over form and getting the most value for money out of buildings, although neither do I think this is a complete explanation.

lacker2• 6 years ago

That's a good point - in the past, when lands were conquered by the Muslim empire, they started to share architectural style. Now, as more lands are conquered by the international-corporate-capitalist empire, they too start to share an architectural style ;-)

avocad• 6 years ago

Here, in the Netherlands, towns get more similar. Mostly because all the shops are part of the same big chains, with the same cheap building style, and the same ways roads are upgraded. Cities all have their own history, so there is more variation there.

anm899• 6 years ago

I have spent the last year trying to open up a cafe and small space where I could build custom motorcycles. I think on paper it is the kind of project that people would say brings life to a city but the city I live in seems like they have designed their zoning laws to be as stacked as possible against someone like me opening up a business that does not fit a cookie cutter mold of some other existing business, at least not without hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay lawyers and architects.The building I want to use could be moved into tomorrow without a penny of changes.

I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

I get that I don't want a power plant or steel forge next to my house, but that's not what we are talking about here. I can't put a cafe (literally an espresso machine and a few tables and chairs) in a structure in residential neighborhood without a huge investment in lawyers and architects and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

And then surprise surprise, all of the things open in the city are chain restaurants which everyone complains about backed by large corporation who have huge budgets for construction, and architects, and lawyers and palm greasing so our cities slowly morph into this.

It really sucks.

dentemple• 6 years ago

and likely installing 70k worth of elevators and a 30k sprinkler system in a two story 3k sqft building and even then, if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

Your complaint is that your new business has to not be a fire hazard or completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

I get you on the fact that zoning laws can get pretty wonky, but these requirements here seem pretty reasonable to me.

war10253• 6 years ago

completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

One of my favorite coffee shops is a little hole in the wall in the basement or an old brick building.

Despite the fact that to get to the shop, you need to go down a narrow set of exterior stairs, the owner was required to put in a wheel-chair accessible bathroom. It's a small space and the bathroom is nearly as big as the seating area.

It's an asinine requirement.

The owner looked into moving to a different spot a block away, which would have been on the main level. He backed out of that when the city told him he needed to install a grease trap to meet code. This despite the fact that nothing he sold contained any sort of grease or oil that would make it down the drain.

Zoning laws and HOAs are great in concept. But they tend to get taken over by the Delores Umbridge [1] types who love nothing more than punishing people for violating stupid rules.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Umbridge

robofanatic8• 6 years ago

if a single person on the review board dislikes the project on a whim, it's out.

This probably sucks.

and secondly, why do you need an elevator for a 2 story building which will basically be used for a cafe? It's not a freaking life saving emergency service where you need people to provide access to every part of building.

djur2• 6 years ago

These are also building codes, not zoning laws. They're both regulations, but the public policy justifications are much different. (The waters are often muddied by defenders of restrictive zoning using spurious health and safety arguments.)

imtringued• 6 years ago

How can you call it completely inaccessible when presumably most of the seating is on the first floor?

AlgorithmicTime• 6 years ago

Quite literally, yes. You're asking for a level of safety and accessibility to be provided that locks basically anyone without access to $300k+ out of going into business. It's not like the building has those accessibility and safety features now. Why should it matter if it doesn't have them when this business opens?

neiman3• 6 years ago

completely inaccessible to the mobility-disabled?

Completely inaccessible to a mobility-disabled person without help.

However, I live in one of those European cities that has kind of quirky small places, sometimes inaccessible to a mobility-disabled person. I also got a good friend who is heavily disabled. Two weeks ago we set up to meet up in one of those places, and when I arrived, a few minutes too late, he was already sitting inside. How? one of the people there helped him get in.

Almost all places are normally accessible mobility-disabled persons, if you only dare to violate the impersonal principle upon which many cities are designed.

anm899• 6 years ago

So where should we draw the line? An 170 year old existing building should never be used for anything because it's not handicap accesible? I can't run an espresso machine that would be perfectly acceptable to use in the same structure for residential reasons but it is magically a fire risk once it is zoned commercial?

Sorry but that does not hold up under scrutiny.

ashtonkem• 6 years ago

I had a realization while going through the process that this is the thing that causes our cities to be so drastically inferior to european cities which were designed before zoning laws were in vogue.

Zoning laws are in fact an American invention, and they were originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work[0]. Their actual impact on the quality of a city was kind of besides the point; the only goal was to hurt racial out groups. Viewed from this lens, it isn't terribly surprising that zoning laws haven't done a great job at making American cities good places to work & live; that's not what those tools were designed for.

0 - https://fee.org/articles/the-racist-history-of-zoning-laws/

nickff5• 6 years ago

I loathe zoning laws, but they were not "originally designed to limit where Chinese immigrants could live and work"; that was one application, but not the whole story. Zoning was more about protecting rich neighborhoods full of mansions from a 'blight' of apartment buildings.[1] Single-family house zoning is what differentiates North America from other regions.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1287cxr

jancsika2• 6 years ago

What's the relevance of what you cite to OP having trouble clearing a commercial venture to apparently serve food, beverages, and test out vehicles with combustible engines?

lukasbarton• 6 years ago

Are you familiar with Moto in Hudson, NY? They are almost exactly this business model. http://www.motocoffeemachine.com/

Obviously every town/city's zoning is different but you may want to try to see if they're willing to discuss the process they went through.

soupfordummies• 6 years ago

There's a place in Atlanta that's very similar as well!

Brother Moto - https://brothermoto.com/

flyingfences• 6 years ago

No, I wasn't familiar, and after seeing that website I'm still not familiar with them at all.

laGrenouille• 6 years ago

We also have a similar place in Lyon called Kargo Kulte: https://www.instagram.com/kargokulte/

No experience with the Motorcycle shop, but the coffee is excellent.

ryanmarsh2• 6 years ago

In one town a WalMart was able to go up after years of resisting any sort of development. They used 3 layers of shell companies to buy up the parcels of land and then re-sell them to each other in a maze of county filings until Wal-Mart finally was purchased the sum of the parcels so they had the land to build. Then they sent an army of lawyers and immediately began suing the shit out of the local leadership that was resisting them. A friend, a developer, built a retail strip adjacent to the new Wal-Mart. He didn't have the resources of Wal-Mart despite already being wealthy. He ended up just having to line everyone's pockets in order to get his permits. Yes, that's right, good old fashioned bribes.

Obviously this is just one narrow example, but it just goes to show things still work this way in some parts of the US.

I hate to say it but you probably should have just bribed them.

rch• 6 years ago

There's enormous pressure to favor high-capital development projects like big box retail in America, and tons of developers working on the fringe of local politics to keep it that way.

lotsofpulp2• 6 years ago

but it just goes to show things still work this way in some parts of the US.

That’s how it works on the East and west coast in my experience. You have to make the right “donations” to the right “campaigns” or police associations, etc etc.

throwaway0a5e2• 6 years ago

Obviously this is just one narrow example, but it just goes to show things still work this way in some parts of the US.

There's a long dead Greek guy who had a famous quip about laws and corruption that's relevant to this kind of thing.

nip180• 6 years ago

Building codes and zoning laws are, in part, a way of increasing the barrier of entry for new businesses. This benefits established businesses at the cost of reducing the number of new businesses.

Licensing, permits, insurance, and complex tax codes are also often used for this purpose. I hope we find a better balance between protecting the consumer, and creating an environment where new and unique businesses can flourish.

nickff5• 6 years ago

I agree with you, but also think that these regulations are about protecting incumbents from business model innovation. The rules mean that existing organizations don't have to bother with finding better ways to serve their customers; they can just keep plodding along without fear.

randcraw4• 6 years ago

What you're describing is gentrification. And yes, it's dehumanizing... to all but the gentry. But until we place another golden idol ahead of Capitalism, the natural gradient of life will forever serve the current idol -- the pursuit of personal profit above all else.

vadansky• 6 years ago

If anything, I would say the Espresso/Motorcycle cafe is the actual gentrification here, which is being stopped by zoning laws. Not that I'm against it, I love the idea, but that is the kind of hipster nonsense (that I love) that sounds like gentrification.

anm899• 6 years ago

This is so laughable. Ok So what should be done with this building you know nothing about, in the neighborhood you know nothing about to make this "acceptable" for your personal utopia?

I wish people like you got your wish and had to live in a world of your own design (free of gentrifiers and capitalism and cafes) and suffer the consequences of the hellscape you'd create out of good intentions and ignorance.

skohan2• 6 years ago

It smells like regulatory capture whenever the barrier to entry is set to a point where it's almost impossible for small players to enter the market.

For this reason I think it makes sense to have a cutoff (or maybe several) for businesses under a certain size to operate in a lazies-faire environment with only the essential regulations to be accountable to. Regulation of business is important in a lot of cases, but if you really want to encourage innovation you need to carve out a space where people can grow up to the point where they can really contend with all that complexity.

tastyfreeze2• 6 years ago

I like this idea. But, what I see happening with this structure is businesses growing up to the cut off and not taking any further measures to grow. For some businesses that will be just fine. Not everybody wants to grow a multi-million dollar business. For those that do want to grow this becomes something like the welfare cliff.

Leherenn• 6 years ago

I'm not sure it's regulatory capture. I'd say most of the times it's death by a thousand cuts.

You have a place that has obvious hygiene issues, e.g. only one sink and everything is done there. Then some people got sick because that place was just careless.

Now you have people clamouring "how could this happen?" "something must be done!" and a new regulation is put in place, and in isolation, it's not necessarily stupid.

Repeat this many times, and you have the situation s people are talking about here.

x87678r2• 6 years ago

Yeah I understand why there are rules to protect workers, the environment, disabled customers, city aesthetics and more. But it does end up making it a huge barrier for anyone to do anything. I'd like to think I'd do a good job starting a small business but the rulebook is so huge it seems insurmountable.

robofanatic8• 6 years ago

May be the only reason for those barriers is to control growth? If it's too easy to get permissions for building stuff then you'll see new cafes popping up on streets everyday.

fludlight• 6 years ago

Corona would have ruined the coffee side of the business, so you probably dodged a bullet.

seneca• 6 years ago

The American regulatory landscape is a death-by-a-thousand cuts that ends up serving to entrench established businesses. Most of them seem reasonable when looked at in isolation, but they add up to an insurmountable burden for most would-be small businesses.

It's absurd to expect a local cafe to spend $70k to become accessible for a tiny fraction of the population. That investment, and the maintenance fees it generates, will likely never balance out. On the other side of the coin, if the disabled community will never spend enough money to justify the cost of installing accessibility features in a cafe, do we as a community just accept that? It seems like something that ought to be handled with tax incentives to those opting to provide accessibility. People smarter than me have thought about this, and it's no accident that they landed on the option that makes it possible for Starbucks to have less competition.

anm899• 6 years ago

right. It's 5x the budget to set up the entire rest of the cafe.

JoeAltmaier3• 6 years ago

My sister's chocolate shop requires state and local duplicate inspectors, fire inspectors and health inspections. She's required to install 7 sinks (minimum) because she serves food. She has to have handicapped parking spot, for a walk-in business with exactly 1 parking space. She has to undergo regular 'training' in food handling. All to serve boxes of chocolates and a latte.

It's part of the one-size-fits-all regulation that states and cities adopt to 'streamline' their rules.

hinkley2• 6 years ago

A friend of a friend was a baker, and to get approval to bake on her own property, she had to buy a trailer with a kitchen in it.

I have a hard time believing that a trailer parked outside on a gravel pad is safer than the domestic kitchen of one of the tidiest people I know. Things like this gives "rules are rules" a flavor similar to "boys will be boys" for me.

beamatronic3• 6 years ago

Is there any part of the US left that wants business?

hinkley2• 6 years ago

I've seen a couple of shops that have an open doorway to the shop next door, and in fact I know some anecdotes of people skirting blue laws (which I suspect have bigger teeth than the things you're dealing with) by opening two shops next to each other.

That arm's length separation may help you with the health dept too.

dahdum• 6 years ago

Mixing light industrial with commercial restaurant in a single building / space sounds like a nightmare to get approved.

You can't be doing welding, metalworking, spray painting, and dealing with gasoline, oil, and other industrial solvents in the same space as food preparation.

gok• 6 years ago

One big issue is we Americans are very picky about what rules they choose to obey. Highway speed limits are for entertainment value but parking availability is written in blood.

jancsika2• 6 years ago

I get that I don't want a power plant or steel forge next to my house, but that's not what we are talking about here.

Reflecting for a bit, I don't know what you're talking about here.

Either you could get the permit to start a garage, or you couldn't. I don't understand why it's relevant that you'd have a cafe next door.

If on the other hand you're describing some kind of hybrid shared space where food, drink, and combustible engines come together then that is way beyond "doesn't fit a cookie cutter mold." Just off the top of my head safety and noise come to mind.

Reedx• 6 years ago

That reminds me of this case in SF, where someone spent 4 years and $1M just trying to get approval to convert their laundromat into an apartment building.

https://reason.com/2018/02/21/san-francisco-man-has-spent-4-...

DoreenMichele• 6 years ago

If you actually want to try to change it, you are welcome to come hang out on r/CitizenPlanners.

Nothing takes the past away like the future. What is currently is not what has to be tomorrow.

gamechangr• 6 years ago

Move to Houston where they are extremely lacks on zoning. I visited there and you can tell that its all intertwined.

kyuudou4• 6 years ago

And sometimes, industrial buildings near residential ones just blow up[1]. I'm generally against zoning and excessive regulation and in fact that Houston business had been fined for safety non-compliance before. But that is quite a BOOM! I can't find if there was a final verdict from the investigation but it was initially thought to be a leaking propylene tank ignited by a spark from faulty electrical.

1: https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/01/31/live-aut...

opwieurposiu• 6 years ago

Building codes have made it extremely expensive and time consuming to build anything other than cookie cutter boxes. Of course the code also reduces fire danger and roof collapses are extremely rare now. The cost is uniqueness. Yet another case where you can't get something for nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Building_Code

doorstar• 6 years ago

ADA rules also add a lot of expense that is important, I believe, but certainly limits the amount of 'uniqueness' that is possible when building new structures.

samatman2• 6 years ago

And yet another case, I suspect, of the Pareto principle: 20% of regulations are load-bearing. They keep lead out of our pipes, asbestos out of our ceilings, and make electrical fires thankfully rare.

The remaining 80% all look good on paper (or they wouldn't be there) but do things like require bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible, even if there's an accessible bathroom two doors down, at a business which would be happy to extend its use to any wheelchair-using customers. Or dictate ceiling heights so that the occasional 2 meter tall customer won't hit his head on exposed pipe.

But these regulations aren't optional "best practices", they have the same weight as ones which prevent building collapse, fire, and cancer. And the sum total is a landscape which is prohibitively hostile, in many cases, to starting a small business.

secabeen• 6 years ago

do things like require bathrooms to be wheelchair accessible, even if there's an accessible bathroom two doors down, at a business which would be happy to extend its use to any wheelchair-using customers

This is not a scalable solution. Now does the business have to have the same hours as your business? If not, what does the handicapped person do when they have to use the restroom and it's not available? If we want disabled people to be full members of our society, we just need to pay the costs of reasonable accommodations to their needs.

guyzero2• 6 years ago

"Now"?

People have been making this complaint since the 80's.

bluGill6• 6 years ago

In the 1980s they told me it goes back to the 1960s. It is safe to assume the the grandkids of the first humans said much the same. And their grandparents complained that kids these days dont know how to behave like they did when I was a kid...

guyzero2• 6 years ago

Well this is more than a good-old-days argument. Highly homogenized architecture nationwide really took off in the 80's as did the prevalence of franchises and the consolidation of department and grocery stores.

qubex• 6 years ago

They don’t.

Wistar• 6 years ago

From 2015. Crosscut: "The new Seattle, where everything looks the same"

https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everythin...

futureproofd• 6 years ago

Aside from the article the main header collage is fantastic.

x87678r2• 6 years ago

Shops, restaurants, clothes virtually all the same too.

dehrmann• 6 years ago

I read another article a few years ago, I think also in The Atlantic, that approached this from the angle of every coffee shop, hip restaurant, and, importantly, Airbnb looking the same everywhere.

Isn't this just the result of globalization? As people travel more, won't tastes naturally converge? And while I'll miss cities having their own distinct flavor, I'm also not sure it's inherently bad that things look more similar. What is bad is that the style and culture we're landing on is driven by the class of people who bounce between world-class cities.

rrdharan• 6 years ago

Yeah I think there are economies of scale at work here, similar to how Hollywood designs blockbusters to be globally marketable (https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53676789).

totablebanjo• 6 years ago

Maybe this article was the one? https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/3/12325104/airbnb-aesthetic-...

205guy2• 6 years ago

Your comment made the think: The Atlantic, the Verge, Vox, New Yörker, they all sound the same to me. Whenever I pick up a magazine these days, I don't know what I'm reading.

My other thought is that bouncing between cities is the unusual activity here. Maybe after sleeping in so many hotels or airbnbs, the brain no longer has a sense of place and gets confused. I'm sure universal IKEA-decor helps, but why do we expect to jet around and visit so many different places and feel connected to them. In most cases people are busy and stressed, moving around without getting to know the place, just to hop in a car, go to a meeting, then back to the hotel or airport. Maybe that's what the brain is having trouble with.

lacker2• 6 years ago

About Apple's new headquarters:

Shaped like a spaceship, it also suggests to the local community, which grants Apple huge tax breaks, that the company could take off and relocate anywhere in the world, whenever it wants.

This seems precisely backwards. A massive, stylish new headquarters in Cupertino makes it harder for Apple to relocate anywhere else in the world, and ties it more to the local community. Indeed, the fact that Apple HQ is in Cupertino seems to define the essence of Cupertino more than anything else. I feel like the author is distacted by appearances and ignoring the substance.

michaelcampbell2• 6 years ago

The point is the perception, not the reality.

1123581321• 6 years ago

That perception is not widely shared. Cupertino sees the reality.

philwelch5• 6 years ago

It’s particularly curious that they compare Apple Park with the Pentagon. It’s a very similar design concept—arranging offices in a ring so as to maximize efficiency. But while Apple Park’s “UFO” aesthetic has the implication that it could take off at any second, the Pentagon was architecturally inspired by a star fort, which has the complete opposite connotation—one builds a fort when one is very determined to stay in the same place.

lgeorget• 6 years ago

Maybe part of that feeling is due to the perfect grids cities are laid out as in America (North and South)? In Europe, roads look like they've been drawn by throwing a game of Mikado on a map. It definitely gives them some character. :-D

arkanciscan• 6 years ago

Every place feels the same because every place is the same place; Earth. I can assure you that the only people who have even been to a different place have no trouble remembering which place they are in.

7ArcticSealz• 6 years ago

Some time back I was looking at a commercial building/space for a personal music studio which would be only for myself, not teaching etc. I was shocked at the prices for even sub-par buildings. If you think homes are expensive, buying a commercial space is even higher in major cities.

Why Every City Feels the Same Now

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