There is nothing inherently soul-crushing about concrete architecture. Some of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the world (especially in tropical/storm-prone regions) are made from concrete. For example
Also, in construction there is a saying: fast, cheap, good. Pick two.
Government-constructed housing will always strive to be cheap. Neither autocrats nor voting tax payers want to spend more money than they have to on any given project. This doesn’t mean that they are always going to go with the absoulute cheapest option - but it does mean that there will always be a price constraint. And this is very legitimate, as any money spent on housing people is money not spent somewhere else - eg, replacing old sewer pipes, funding scientific research, health care, etc.
Meanwhile, you want housing for people now. Ie, fast.
And therefore, you are sacrificing “good”. And the least essential part of “good” is aesthetics.
Demanding perfection is the surest path to failure due to analysis paralysis. This is essentially your tactic here - saying “I want X, and Y, and Z, and everything else is TERRIBLE.” A far better tactic is to say “what would be pretty good?”, and do that. Then once you have something that is pretty good, you say “okay, how can we make it better?”
not reaffirm the class and poverty of those who live in it
This will likely be quite difficult. Social strata try to distunguish themselves over time, and one of the ways they do this is via their housing - how it looks, where it is, the amenities it provides, etc. If you build government housing out of brick, in 10 years the middle class will be building with wood.
rtxn@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Did you run out of punctuation or something? Here, use some of mine:
…,???Despite what some simple minds may think, residential buildings are not restricted to being either high density commie blocks or American cookie cutter suburban hellscapes. Medium-density townhouses are all over Europe, but the regressive bigots created zoning laws that made them illegal to build.
phuntis@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
no I just refuse to use punctuation and I didn’t say anything about medium rise buildings I’m british I don’t live in america I literally only said you can build taller buildings out of nicer materials than concrete cause they were saying that concrete high rises are more efficient than single family brick homes like your can make flats out of brick too
alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Refusing to use punctuation is one of the best ways for you to get people to ignore everything you write LOL.
lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
This dude never listens to that pesky superego the rest of us do