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Comment by kfprt | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately this plague of bland boxes has come to my neighborhood. Internal volume is more valued than neighborhood aesthetics. It seems there's a correlation between these boxes and people never leaving the house but to work.

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So my spouse and I built a 'bland box'. We did it for simplicity and practicality sake. Few breaks to the roof line = few opportunities for my roof to leak in 40 years. Simple design with a smaller footprint = more money available for high quality materials in the walls, floors, and ceilings. Tan siding because it's cheap and easy for me to fix on my own when it gets broken. Dark brown shingles because they will fade to light brown over their life and still look okay instead of needing to be replaced in the first 10 years of their 30 year life.

Just saying, some people do these things for different reasons.

I think this very much reinforces my point. 100% focus on the structure itself (especially interior) and relatively zero on the neighborhood or exterior. In a word, atomized.

“How dare people build houses for themselves to live in and not for me to look at!?”

That's a clever twist of phrasing. You could just as easily have said "How dare people build houses for themselves instead of thinking about all the other people that have to look at them?"

Clearly, there's some tension between these two goals, and the balance shifts back and forth over time.

If somebody doesn’t like the look of my house, they are more than welcome to get off my lawn.

I agree a lot of the balance has shifted this way but I don't see this as bad.

When you are very wealthy you can have both but for those without that much money I don't blame anyone for choosing functionality over the aesthetics of a neighborhood. It seems rather insane to me to insist that your neighbor must increase their budget 20 or 40 percent (perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars) just so your house can be a couple percentage points more desirable.

Insane perhaps from the perspective of a dweller. Some neighborhoods put more emphasis on walkability, not merely from aesthetic consideration but a desire to have walkable local businesses. Of course this is not the case if the extent that you see your neighborhood is confined to your driving commute. If this is the case then aesthetics matter little and why not live farther outside the city.

This attitude is a good-sized chunk of the reason why the article was written. The constant focus on "how to make it as cheaply as possible, now" has brought some benefits: we can make housing that in many ways (not all) is better and cheaper than it ever has been in the past. But ... building neighborhoods of "desirable" character is about more than how much your house costs right now. It's about the legacy a culture leaves to the future. It's about the difference between driving through small towns in America and small towns in Europe (probably the middle east and asia too). It's an investment, not in your home, but in your culture's future.

I just think this is insane to me. We know the cost to build more intricate builds - it isn't a 2% cost increase its a 30 or 50% cost increase. There are already tons of restrictions on building and zoning in America.

I like nice cars but I dont insist that everyone drive a European sports car just because it would be aesthetically more pleasing. Ultimately, a city/town will be better off if people can spend 20% of their income on housing instead of 50%. Not just because they are selfish or short-sighted but because they can actually use the additional resources on things for themselves, their family, and their community.

And in 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 year, some of our descendants will walk/drive/fly/float through it all and wonder why we never built anything to last, or anything beautiful.

Beautiful and comfortable neighborhoods ARE additional resources for ourselves, our families and our communities.

Nothing is stopping you from building a castle on your property now. My guess is the difference in price is about 5-fold - and the castle will need tons of costly repairs to adapt to whatever the favored amenities are.

I've lived in really old buildings. Even if the bricks on the outside were over 100 years old it was extremely expensive to update the air conditioning and windows to be a good living experience. Why take such a superficial view of what is "built to last" just because the outside stays the same? Best case scenario for a long last building is a ship of theseus situation. And while it may be cost efficient for historic college campuses to renovate their old buildings continuously, chances are this not applicable to random middle class homeowners.

It's not about castles. It's about neighborhoods.

I've lived in really old buildings too. Right now, I live in an adobe house that was likely first constructed in about 1870. Growing up, I lived in some houses that were built (of stone) in the 1700s. And yes, there are problems caused by the fact that our idea of what a home/house ought to be changes over time, for lots of different reasons.

I still think we can do better than most mid-range contemporary US stick built housing, and the neighborhoods it creates.

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