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Comment by justrealist | Hacker News Reader

> The amount of sniffy negativism on this site is absurd

I don't want to be monocausal, but a lot of this is simply Europeans spending time on this site and voicing opinions about American architecture.

It's well-understood that Europe doesn't build significant buildings anymore, and there's confusion about why a US city would want to build something large and noteworthy.

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As a european, when I see this negativity, I see it as americans hating on each other, in this case blue state americans hating on a red state. Since HN doesn't have /pol/ style flags, I guess we'll never know.

I view it as less blue versus red and more class and culture clashes between states. I have blue friends in Texas that will get upset when a blue person from a coastal state says disparaging stuff about the whole state and its people.

>> It's well-understood that Europe doesn't build significant buildings anymore, and there's confusion about why a US city would want to build something large and noteworthy.

That seems a little unfair. For example, Philharmonie de Paris, France; Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg; The Shard, London; MAAT Museum, Lisbon.

The Shard is the 47th largest building in the world. It's only notable in the absence of any other significant buildings in a nominally world-class city.

While I love supertall buildings, I don’t think height or size necessarily equates with notoriety, especially in a place like London.

Paris seems to do pretty OK on all of density, vibrancy, and aesthetics, while segregating all their somewhat-tall buildings to La Defense. I'm skeptical that moving all those into the city proper, let alone aiming for top-X-buildings slots, would improve the city in any way.

If the comment meant "tall" vs "significant," then granted. I think that, as a term of architectural art, "significant" means more than tall...

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