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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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...

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!