Interview | Beauty in the built environment (Part II)

This is the second part of our interview with two scholars who research what makes cities beautiful. If you missed part one, you can read it here. 

Some research on "beautiful cities" has emphasized the economic premium placed on built environments considered particularly aesthetically pleasing. Is there a way to avoid a situation where urban beauty becomes a commodity, available primarily to the wealthy and tourists, while others are left in relatively drab surroundings?

Stefano Cozzolino: As we said, urban beauty is the result of many factors, most of which are hardly designable. With urban beauty comes social appreciation - the fact that people tend to like a certain area - and, as a consequence, most of the time, the economic value of those places rises. This is unavoidable.

However, this shouldn't prevent us from generating new beautiful urban areas. In fact, the role of planners should be to ensure that urban beauty can eventually emerge everywhere. Each place should have the right to improve and become more beautiful. Planners should focus on guaranteeing certain conditions that can facilitate the emergence of beauty.

The point is not to see the presence of beauty, and the "economic premium" that comes with it, as an obstacle to vague ideas of social equality or justice. This is a very limited understanding of the phenomenon. What shall we do, destroy beauty to create a more just society?

Asher Elbaz: Is it possible, in a capitalist society, to prevent something desirable from becoming a commodity? We see this dynamic in any number of areas, even in the healthcare industry, with human health becoming a commodity… 

"Still, I disagree with the premise that beauty necessarily has to cost more or that certain groups will inevitably hoard access to it, to the exclusion of others."

In my opinion, urban beauty can be achieved without adding any extra costs, in simple and common-sense ways. As cities are shaped by diverse and sometimes even opposing forces, sometimes the simple act of achieving better integration between the various actors is already enough to achieve more aesthetic and higher-quality design. In this sense, beauty can be a physical expression of listening to others and the environment.

Moreover, if beauty is the result of an extra investment by a developer who expects a return on their investment, then certainly it will increase costs. But if the investment comes from a local government which is interested in social returns, then the result can actually be the opposite of exclusion.

Is it even reasonable to aspire to build beautiful human environments in places where resources are scarce and rapid population growth creates pressure for fast and furious construction, such as in cities in the Global South?

Asher: Not only does it make sense, it's a necessity. As more and more people move to cities, our living environments become more urban, denser and more intensively planned. Good design that creates an inviting and calming built environment, one which acknowledges the humanity of its inhabitants, will soften this process. It is absolutely essential, in my opinion, that we find a way to create beautiful urban environments for each community and particular context in the future.

Stefano: I think it should be a planning ambition. I understand the complexity and difficulties presented by rapid urbanization processes, particularly in the Global South. Making these new areas beautiful (or helping them become more beautiful) should be seen as an incremental process that can be shaped both at the very beginning of the construction phase (for example, by providing a minimum decent infrastructural framework), but also as an incremental process of continuously improving them (as has happened in many favelas and informal areas in the last decades). It's important to keep in mind that many cities (or parts of them) that we like today were once built informally - although today's pressure is surely unprecedented and not comparable to that of past centuries.

Of course, having functional and working urban areas that respect conditions for a dignified social life is a top priority. Yet this should not prevent us (and inhabitants) from aspiring to generate beauty everywhere. As I tried to explain before, it is more about introducing certain seeds (or conditions) and then hoping for and nurturing good transformation processes. 

"Creating beautiful urban areas is not an end in itself, but must be seen as the consequence of having a good and healthy society that takes care of its environment." 

What kinds of practices can planners adopt in contemporary societies to encourage greater harmony, aesthetics and beauty in our urban environments?

Asher: There are many things that we can and should do. Planning processes need to be more collaborative, inclusive and attentive to input from communities. The erroneous conception of the brilliant architect as the figure that leads the process must give way to a healthier approach that values teamwork, cooperation and consensus. Well-crafted regulation is important, despite its shortcomings, and the state needs to understand its role in reigning in some of the excesses of the market. Finally, the terminology we use to discuss plans must make space for subjective personal and community input. We must remember that people are motivated not only by purely "rational" factors, but also by emotions.

Stefano: There are several different ways, too many to list here. The most important aspect is having a society composed of individuals who care about the places where they live. Raising a spirit of attachment toward our surroundings and spreading the aspiration to improve our direct environment (and, in many cases, property) is surely a first step. It is only if the majority of our population shares this ambition that we can eventually continue to generate beauty. 

"A city is not like a piece of art, where one artist can directly create the perfect, most beautiful environment. It is more like a complex mosaic in which different actors compose and adjust each piece over time."

Of course, a sense of order and harmony must be infused into the mosaic or system (by means of general rules and infrastructures), but it is then up to the small pieces to generate that necessary diversity.

However, thinking that top-down rules can directly generate urban beauty is also reductive. Informal institutions and social habits and customs often shaped traditional cities in the past. This is the reason why beauty is primarily a cultural challenge. It is only if society as a whole is concerned with the creation and maintenance of beautiful urban areas that beauty will eventually emerge.

From a more technical perspective, especially in the case of large-scale transformations and developments, let's rediscover practices such as plot-based urbanism, but also more incremental and organic approaches capable of accommodating various initiatives from a plurality of actions. The challenge is to accept the idea of urban transformations as inherently open-ended.

Nevertheless, there is no conclusive recipe for this topic, as there is not only one type of urban beauty. Very different types of urban areas can be beautiful for very different reasons. In this regard, I invite scholars and researchers to focus more on what areas people like and why, and consequently, how these areas have evolved and were shaped over time. From my experience, there is much to be learned and discovered behind this question.