Big science

Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last fifty years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading--the jive-plastic commuter tract home wastelands, the Potemkin village shopping plazas with their vast parking lagoons, the Lego-block hotel complexes, the "gourmet mansardic" junk-food joints, the Orwellian office "parks" featuring buildings sheathed in the same reflective glass as the sunglasses worn by chaingang guards, the particle-board garden apartments rising up in every meadow and cornfield, the freeway loops around every big and little city with their clusters of discount merchandise marts, the whole destructive, wasteful, toxic, agoraphobia-inducing spectacle that politicians proudly call "growth." --James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere

Comments

[joshi]

i couldn't agree more. and its a shame that it takes wealth to keep things pristine - a little bit like the fact that todays rich people are fit and the middle class obese.

[Bryant]

the problem is that most americans have no concept of beauty. i would guess that 8/10 yanks would think the above office park photo is aesthetically pleasing with its well-kept lawns, sleek design, and ample room for parking. but it ain't.

and even the wealthy are building homes called "executive mansions" or "mcmansions"--all placed within 5 feet of each other in a gated community off the highway.

[joshi]

no, no, no. the wealthy ain't in mcmansions - thats the nouveau riche, the middle classes amongst the well off.

the truly wealthy are in very discreet estates - you can't even see them.

the rich are thin/the middle classes are fat truism once again.