This subreddit dedicated to bad Earth pics was created in 2012 and has gained over 22k members since then. Some of the photos feature sarcastic captions about what beautiful scenery they are capturing, while others actually highlight beautiful backdrops and sunsets tainted by parking lots and telephone poles in the forefront. Any photos of Earth are welcome in this subreddit, as long as they are not actually good enough to be featured background images on a new laptop. (You know the ones.)
Beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but there are a few places that we can all agree are stunning. Even if you have no plans to ever see the Seven Natural Wonders, you can’t deny that sites like the Victoria Falls, the Great Barrier Reef, and Mount Everest are special. But why are there so many ugly cities? According to Alain de Botton, a London-based writer and author of The Architecture of Happiness, calling a city attractive might not even be subjective. There might be certain criteria that a city can meet to make it more or less beautiful.
There is nothing wrong with a city being known for something other than its looks. If every place in the world was as stunning as Florence or Kyoto, they would not seem as special. But as Alain de Botton outlines in his book, there are six principles a city must follow to be deemed attractive. The first being order, or “some degree of uniformity among buildings”. Next, he mentions visible life. People must be out and about doing things, walking their dogs, having picnics, etc. Compactness also adds value to a city’s appearance. If everything is too spread out, the open space makes the city feel less lively. Similarly, coziness and mystery help as well, meaning there should be many streets with some “unexpected turns here and there”. Scale is also important to de Botton, as he says structures should be no larger than five stories high, unless they are particularly monumental buildings. And lastly, local color is important, meaning that the city’s color scheme should reflect its culture or a sense of place.
De Botton believes that all of these principles should be considered by city planners. But as Nancy Mitchell points out in a piece for Apartment Therapy, de Botton’s ideas overlap with urban planner Jane Jacobs’ four qualities of successful city neighborhoods. Jacobs’ qualities include a mixture of primary uses, short blocks, a mixture of buildings of different ages, and density.
She notes the importance of a mixture of primary uses, so there is more than one appealing reason to visit or live in a certain city. If there are attractive neighborhoods, successful businesses, unique restaurants, tourist attractions, and cute local shops, a city has successfully accomplished this quality. Short blocks are self-explanatory, but they make it easier to get around and support many businesses at once. If a shop or restaurant is too far away, it may deter residents from making the trek. Or if it’s out of sight, it is likely to be out of mind as well. But having short blocks allows residents to have access to many things at once and makes them more likely to engage with their community.
#7 I Just Visited A Friend In Paris. He Has Quite A View From His Sh*tter
A mixture of buildings of different ages was not an aesthetic choice of Jacobs, but rather more of a financial tactic. She believed that if a building is older and has less expensive rent than new structures, certain companies would be able to conduct their business without being pushed out by rising rent prices. She wanted to prevent older, more traditional businesses from having to close down, taking a piece of the city’s history with them.
Density is also self-explanatory, but it’s helpful for several reasons. First, it allows businesses and restaurants to thrive when there are enough patrons to keep them afloat. It also allows for more diversity when a city has a larger number of people and is likely to attract even more. Dense cities are also better for the environment as residents are less reliant on cars for transportation when everything is close by.
#12 This Is It, My Lifelong Dream: Going To The United States Of America. My Arrival In New York City. Here Pictured, The Glorious NYC Skyline
De Botton and Jacobs had different reasons for favoring similar features in a city, but it is encouraging to hear that whether a city planner focuses on aesthetics or the success of a city neighborhood, they will probably kill two birds with one stone. Time and time again, however, we see modern cities built to be cheaper, uglier versions of their predecessors. And why is that? The School of Life broke down some of their theories as to why modern cities are such eyesores in this piece, the first being what they call “The War on Beauty”.
They explain that hundreds of years ago, it was understood that when an architect designed a building, they would strive to make it functional and beautiful. However, more recently, functionalism seems to have become the sole priority for many designers. “The concept of beauty had been rendered old-fashioned, it smelt elitist and wooly. No one could any more complain that beauty was missing from the world without sounding soft-headed,” The School of Life writes. “Modernity became ugly because it forgot how to articulate that beauty is, in the end, as much of a necessity for a building as a functioning.”
#14 I Was Sick For 10 Days In Kashmir, India. At Least I Could Capture The View From My Hotel Window
The School of Life also theorizes that no one understands what is attractive anyway. Many assume that in the premodern world, there were strict rules about what features made a building attractive, but over time, people started to disagree. Different styles like Gothic, Islamic, Chinese, Alpine and Thai architecture emerged and debates ensued about what was best. Eventually, objective standards went out the window, and it was not clear what was even ugly anymore, property developers had their way with creating bland, characterless buildings. “Cities grew ever uglier, but no one was allowed to say that there was such a thing as ‘ugliness’,” The School of Life notes. “After all, isn’t taste just a very very personal thing?”
#16 The Electric Company Cut Away An Ugly Tree For Some Beautiful Power Lines
Originality is another theory The School of Life puts forward for why modern architecture is so sad to look at. They explain that for most of history, architects did not feel the need to be unique or reinvent the wheel. They worked together with a team, and various districts of any given city looked cohesive. But eventually, the age of individualism began, and architects began thinking that big, bold choices were the way to go when designing buildings. “To ask an architect to fit in with everyone else was as stifling as asking a poet to type out the tax code,” The School of Life writes. Then some of the ugliest buildings in the world came about: Sky Tower in Taiwan, Capital Gate in Abu Dhabi, The Sharp Centre in Toronto, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. While these structures can get credit for creativity, I'm personally not a believer in the idea that all publicity is good.
