Found in 7 comments on Hacker News
Because it's obviously and arrogantly aesthetically terrible. Architects, like the elites who commission and support their work, have a fundamentally adversarial relationship with the rest of us.

Even the relatively good stuff stands alone and is, at best, aggressively indifferent towards its surroundings.

Kunstler wrote a good book on it:

https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-L...

(and several less-good follow up books)

carsongross · 2016-10-21 · Original thread
I'm sorry to see you get down voted, but I share your sentiments and agree that it was something that could be reasonably called a conspiracy. Unfortunately it has become part of the intellectual furniture of left-wing ideology, which makes a lot of otherwise perfectly nice people support extremely inhumane building patterns.

Some books on the topic that I have read, if you haven't are:

https://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom-Wolfe/dp/031242...

https://www.amazon.com/Old-Way-Seeing-Architecture-Magic/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-L...

A funny side story: I realized I was some sort of reactionary my freshman year at Berkeley, when I was standing in the memorial glade, swinging my gaze back and forth between Doe Memorial Library and Evans Hall.

carsongross · 2016-05-08 · Original thread
If you would like this rant in book form, throwing in some well-deserved broadsides at architects, I highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-La...

I would also add the radical individualists of the 60s who made the cities unlivable for families.

carsongross · 2016-02-02 · Original thread
For those of you inclined to disagree with the idea of learning to love obviously ugly buildings, I would like to recommend two books:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Landsca...

http://www.amazon.com/Bauhaus-Our-House-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0312429...

Kunstler is a bit of a crank, but his analysis of the problems with modern architecture and urbanism are very good. Wolfe, of course, is a genius, and his very short book is a fantastic and deeply funny (if depressing) read.

rwhitman · 2014-05-02 · Original thread
Great book on the cars-first disaster of urban planning that I read years ago if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/The-Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Landsca...
lux · 2013-01-22 · Original thread
City planning in North America always makes me think of Kunstler. I saw him speak at the Winnipeg Art Gallery years ago about peak oil, and bought his book The Geography of Nowhere (http://www.amazon.com/Geography-Nowhere-Americas-Man-Made-La...). That book completely opened up my thinking about how the elements in a city relate to each other, and how community and economic activity are so fundamentally intertwined. Great read!

Fresh book recommendations delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday.