[smokel]

There's a bit of survivorship bias in your reasoning. The extremely wealthy built beautiful things that we still enjoy. But the horrible places that common people had to call home in the 19th century are not treasured in the same way.

[whamlastxmas]

Agreed. I think people prefer what’s familiar, and what’s familiar is what we can afford. Compare traditional to tasteful billionaire penthouse and most people will choose penthouse

[lif]

yes, and add to that the 20th century.

And yet so many claim all we need is moooore housing.

I would love to see quality of life become more of a ubiquitous focus and feature of what is built.

[Althuns]

Agreed. We do need more housing, but it can also be more quality housing. This is the part that most of the "YIMBY" folks miss out on.

We have a new, modern, but as cheap as possible building with the smallest legal unit sizes that went in around the corner from us less than 10 years ago. It's now nearly empty because every unit leaks, the appliances and cabinetry already need to be replaced, and it'll have to be half rebuilt to fix several structural problems.

The developer, fortunately, failed in getting a second building started because of community pushback. In response, the community has been attacked at the local, and recently international, level for being NIMBYs and "stopping necessary progress".

The same folks who promote more sustainable and people focused city design are fighting for these worthless buildings. Their intentions are right in the bigger picture sense, but they leave no nuance for what's actually happening on the ground.