With only 10% of the built environment being architecture why all the focus on that.... where are the op-ed's on the big box whores and the 90% of buildings suffocating our society.
@Mr_Wiggin: I recently learned the Italian Futurists were a bunch of horrible people - there's a quote from a particular manifesto where the author was disgusted at himself for not having the guts to run over a couple cyclists who were holding him up while he was driving - right after expressing joy at purposefully running over stray dogs.
where are the op-ed's on the big box whores and the 90% of buildings suffocating our society.
Because you can't write about sprawl-chitecture without talking about the serious problems with automobility.
@Steven Ward and Donna, what say you? Are these fighting words?...
"Aaron Renn, who runs the Urbanophile blog, has remarked that Louisville has much better restaurants than its richer and larger neighbor to the north, Indianapolis."
I'd say as recently as 3 years ago that was true, but today we're neck and neck. Louisville still has better neighborhood urbanism, though, and a better relationship to its riverfront.
It's a common fallacy that more expensive things are better. Money is just a measure of profit and expense. Usually your expense and someone else's profit.
OMG. OMG! Justin Shubow, with whom I've been having a heated twitter debate over the last 24 hours, is the effin' PRESIDENT of the National Civic Art Society, the group trying to stop Gehry's design for the Eisenhower Memorial!!! OMG!!
Seriously, from his tweets to me you can read that this guy has only the most shallow, reactionary understanding of architecture and how it has changed over the last 100 years. What the hell, man?! Why was this man given a platform in Forbes to spout about a topic on which he has no knowledge?
Good heavens I just don't trust journalism any more.
While I think that Gehry's Eisenhower design is a rather large turd, the "counter-proposals" from the Flat Earth...er... Civic Art Society were in no way an improvement.
Just wrote Justin Shubow about the Walmart’s of this world. Isn’t it the 90% of garbage that he should be writing about instead of the 10% trying to do good? The AIA had years ago an Orchids & Onions program to encourage publications to write about orchids and onions….nobody would touch it for fear of reprisal. I’m retired and untouchable, what can I do to speak out against the 90%?
looks like the USOC's pick to host the 2024 olympics is Boston. They've got 2 years to pull together a proposal to put to the IOC. Currently it's just between them and Rome...
wow. he talks about philosophy, terrorism, and menswear too. it's like he's jack of no trades, master of none.
if the death of journalism hasn't been declared yet, here it is.
carrera, you could be a journalist and write about orchids and onions! forbes will accept anyone. i'm sure you just have to tell them you're happy to work for the 'exposure' (instead of money)
OMG, that "About" page is painful. I want to say something really, really crass about it but I'll refrain. If anyone wants to guess, I'll confirm if you get it right.
Flat Earth Society, nice one, Pete!
Miles, we tweeted at each other about a dozen times. Twitter is fun, it's like haiku.
^Donna, I'm not sure Forbes is what we usually think of when we talk about journalism. It's essentially a paid blog. And everyone like me who google this and followed through read the article just added a little $ to Justin Shubow's account :)
I just came across that Forbes thing. Just nasty. Two things really ticked me off. 1) that he conflates all of us into a few big name star. Really, I don't appreciate what Frank Ghery does either and I think it's a bad joke, but I do wish the general public had more 'taste'.
and 2) What the VAST majority of us do - every day - is work that is practical, affordable and intelligent as possible, given the wide variety of constraints we have. Most of my work is nothing special and fits into the various neighborhoods it inhabits, fits a tight budget and makes the owners very happy. I would love to work on high budget flashy projects, but honesty, I also enjoy what I do. I try to make it as awesome as possible - every time.
Exactly, gruen. I tweeted to him that all the media covers is starchitects, meanwhile the vast majority of architects are working collaboratively making happy clients, we just don't get press for it. Grrrrr, indeed.
Hmm, autocorrect just tried to change starchitects to arachnids. Kind of an insult to the superior design and engineering skills of spiders, IMO!
Donna, as media lives to sell advertising they only "cover" terror, controversy and outrage. So unless your building is record-setting expensive or looks like a dystopian movie stage set or collapses on completion (preferably all three) it will be ignored, or at beast lambasted because it isn't.
At this point society as seems to lack any other measure. Blame it on advertising?
Spending my fri evening coordinating actual window sizes with head and sill rough heights. Throw in some other pre planning on the roof and wall framing. Unfortunately my building will stand up, won't leak and probably will be worth more than it'll cost to build. Might even make the owner and neighbors happy. Guess I've failed.
ok, jumping back in for this one, what does 'happy clients' even mean? Happy at the time of build, still happy in 5 years, 10 years? And who is it we're trying to make happy, the guy paying the bills or the people who use it every day, the people who live and work next to it every day, or the general public who just drives by it occasionally? Those often aren't the same thing, and frankly a lot of the architectural critique I hear going on is the drive-by kind. The happy architectural critic on day 1 is a very different thing than a happy client on year 10, or a happy neighborhood on year 25. And unfortunately, the client may not care about any of those other people, or about anything beyond their own nose on day 1, and what are designers supposed to do then?
Basically my brain is bogged down with short-sighted clients and my own gentrifying neighborhood, and despite the valid critiques on the Katrina houses, I am having a lot of trouble figuring out what the author even thinks that designers should do in the face of those sorts of conditions. The author at once argues that architects are ignorant of real world conditions like weather, and also argues that architecture should serve some broad swath of the population's taste while himself ignoring the real world conditions like finances.
For instance, I live next to a new development going up that I just absolutely HATE. It's a development of condos that in no way address the street, like a complex for people enamored with the idea of echo park that in no way want to actually interact with echo park, except to add traffic to my already overcrowded street. But the actual clients are probably super happy because they're getting the maximum value packed into their land they possibly can, and I'm sure they wouldn't have let construction proceed with anything less. So was the architect supposed to make me, the neighbor with a valid critique, happy? Oh wait, no, that would have gotten them fired.
Great to see you, rationalist! And yes excellent post.
I default to "happy client" because so many of my clients have been homeowners, so they are the user of the project, as well. But I also speak out, I have done so here on lots of threads, about the architect's ethical responsibility to the community in which they practice *as well as* the ethical responsibility to their client and the users. It can be a very hard path, and it's impossible to make everyone happy all of the time!
Carrera, I do think the owners, in the case of developers, should be getting the critique. Like in the case of these condos rationalist mentions - they'er clearly not as successful for the community as for the developer, so one would hope the market would speak to the developer's selfishness.
Donna - Had the honor to do a project with Charles Moore….as I drove him through a big city he sat there and pointed out the window….”that’s architecture….that’s not”…..for miles he commented, most not. I think it’s that simple, it is or it isn’t and all the critics need to do is point out the difference. Bring back Orchids & Onions..…keep it black or white…..educating the public and owners of the distinction will make a big difference….critiquing architecture accomplishes nothing, critiquing things that are not architecture will make all the difference. They are critiquing the wrong things.
Unfortunately the residential market in my area is so incredibly tight that people will buy anything, in certain areas in particular. I wouldn't buy one of these, but I have no doubt that somebody will. Carrera, you helped me see exactly the issue that gets me—we critique a whole project, and call that architectural critique, but it's really about architecture, development, urban planning, etc. Critiquing competition entries for example for being too flashy is just stupid, because that's what wins competitions. At that point, the architects are just competing to even get the opportunity to engage with the client and/or end user, but they often can't win that opportunity with something the end user would actually like because there's some competition jury there wanting a sexy rendering to publish.
Just found out a house that I've had my eye on for a while is coming to market, and the owners/flippers are listing it for 325,000. I can't afford that, and it's not even worth it. So heartbroken. I hate renting, and I'm so afraid nothing will be avalaible in our school zone that we can afford. I'm at the point now that I'm thinking of writing letters to houses and owners begging for them to sell me their house.
I also live a rapidly gentrifying area - I'm really lucky to have bought at the bottom of the market - there's no way we could afford to live here if we were buying today.
I just made a bunch of new enemies in my neighborhood! I went to a neighborhood association meeting to support an architect friend for a development proposal in our neighborhood. It's a very good proposal, nice design and great use of a gateway site. Of course the neighbors are all screaming Too big! Doesn't fit in! I lose my view! Looks commercial!
Sadly my main takeaway from the meeting is that many of my neighbors not only can't understand the basics of urban development but likely struggle to remember to put on their pants before their shoes in the morning. Sheesh.
"Gateway" sites here are slated for large scale commercial development. It's basically a gold rush with zero concern for traffic, nature, quality of life, etc.
My Communities Idea of a "Gateway Project" is a bus maintenance storage building with some administrative offices. Now that is traffic, nature quality of life and of course pedestrian friendly. That is after they tear down the turn of the century Brick Masonry building which is a mini Tate Gallery building waiting to be discovered.
Guess what!!!! I just figured out my archinect password, so I can post from a computer now!!!!
Anyway.... That sucks Donna. That house I was whining about is only 1700 sf. A bank will never finance that price. Maybe he will get what he deserves, and have to drop the price 80,000 dollars after it sits on the market for MONTHS. His reasoning is that there is marble in the bathrooms. Idiot.
So now we are looking at foreclosures. Have any of you ever gone that route? It all seems so complicated. Has anyone ever had any luck just knocking on doors, and offering to buy someone's home that isn't currently for sale?
Think the market will tank before our lease is up in June?
Sarah, I know a couple here who bought possibly the sweetest house/lot in the city by getting to know the person who owned it and asking for the ability to buy it first when she was ready to move. It was in their neighborhood so they were able to tell the lady who had lived there for generations that they were committed to staying in the neighborhood and raising their family there. it worked.
IMO it can't hurt to send letters to people telling them that you like their house and when they decide to sell you'd like to talk to them about it. Some people hate the thought of listing their house with a realtor and all the paperwork, so they'd appreciate a direct contact; some people love their house and really want it to go to someone else who will love it too.
About to list my house on the market too. I can't find a house I like that I can afford but I have to move closer to work, putting way too many miles on, wasting time driving. Probably into an apartment, which I'm not excited about because I'm going to miss my garden. Real estate is so tricky, house prices here are insanely high and the housing stock is all either "luxury" or fixer-upper. Meaning I have to overbuy crap I don't want or buy a money pit that is too expensive in the first place that I can't afford to fix.
I bought my current house as a short sale, a pre-foreclosure. The previous owners owed more on it than we paid for it so the bank had to eat the difference. It wasn't complicated for us, but I think we got lucky. Having extremely good credit and a down payment helped.
well, hopefully you can sell your current house for way more than it's worth so you have some of that equity to throw at the new one. if they all got too expensive, yours should have too. good luck.
Yes, my house has increased in value quite a bit, but it is super old and needs repairs too. There are houses on my block that are selling for 500k that are bigger and nicer than mine. There are lots of people flipping houses in my hood. I've accumulated some debt from being laid off and starting a business. The business is 25 miles from my house so that's why I need to move, but it is in an even more expensive area (the Hamptons of Colorado) which is good for business but not for buying a house, there is a hot investor market and wealthy investors snatch up properties by outbidding regular people and then relist for 45k more than they bought them for 2 months before. Fixer uppers are still $350k-400k. Some condos can be cheaper, but then they may have $250 a month HOAs. Going to live in an apartment for a few years, save up money to (hopefully) buy a piece of land and build a house 5-10 years down the road. Or design-build a live-work space.
I'm not rich, but I try to do this anyway. I had lunch with my son at a Steak-n-Shake last weekend (local company, excellent ads and graphic identity, delicious shakes, don't judge), and the waitress came to us and said "I'm the only server on the floor right now, so I just want to warn you things might not be as quick as usual" then she did a great job holding down a quite heavy load. I tipped her 65%, which was still only ten bucks, but I hope it made her day easier.
As a mounting body of research is showing, wealth can actually change how we think and behave—and not for the better. Rich people have a harder time connecting with others, showing less empathy to the extent of dehumanizing those who are different from them. They are less charitable and generous. They are less likely to help someone in trouble. And they are more likely to defend an unfair status quo. If you think you’d behave differently in their place, meanwhile, you’re probably wrong: These aren’t just inherited traits, but developed ones. Money, in other words, changes who you are.
As a car's sticker price increases from say, a Honda Civic to something like this fine German automobile, so does the likelihood that its driver will cut you off at a four-way stop or refuse to wait for a pedestrian in the crosswalk.
Miles I heard about a study in which people played a game of Monopoly where one player was given more money to start and got to use both dice while the other player rolled with only one. The 'rich" player also was given better snacks during the game. During the course of the game the "rich" player actually started to believe that they were entitled to their good fortune. This was repeated many times with the same results.
Speaking of neighborhoods and rebuilding, my garden district historic neighborhood was hit by a tornado in October and a few houses, mostly oldish unkept up bungalows have been torn down. This has me worried that some mini mcmansion pseudo french provinicial/fake acadian style snout houses might appear in their place. even though this is a historic area these styles are taking over down here. i have no problem with the style if it's done right but i know they won't be. Our neighborhood association seems a little lame and so there will probably be no issues with it. Particularly since back in the sixties someone was able to put up a number of tract style apartment houses that all look horrible yet survived the tornado.
Did the "rich" players also get exclusive use of the "Get Out of Jail Free" card?
And Vado, if your garden district is anything like where I'm living, they will replace the those houses with bungalow-style homes with front facing garages. Like this:
Thread Central
when all else fails, blame 'modern'
Arch is not solely art: one of the fundamental mistakes of Mods
With only 10% of the built environment being architecture why all the focus on that.... where are the op-ed's on the big box whores and the 90% of buildings suffocating our society.
@Mr_Wiggin: I recently learned the Italian Futurists were a bunch of horrible people - there's a quote from a particular manifesto where the author was disgusted at himself for not having the guts to run over a couple cyclists who were holding him up while he was driving - right after expressing joy at purposefully running over stray dogs.
where are the op-ed's on the big box whores and the 90% of buildings suffocating our society.
Because you can't write about sprawl-chitecture without talking about the serious problems with automobility.
@Steven Ward and Donna, what say you? Are these fighting words?...
"Aaron Renn, who runs the Urbanophile blog, has remarked that Louisville has much better restaurants than its richer and larger neighbor to the north, Indianapolis."
I'd say as recently as 3 years ago that was true, but today we're neck and neck. Louisville still has better neighborhood urbanism, though, and a better relationship to its riverfront.
It's a common fallacy that more expensive things are better. Money is just a measure of profit and expense. Usually your expense and someone else's profit.
OMG. OMG! Justin Shubow, with whom I've been having a heated twitter debate over the last 24 hours, is the effin' PRESIDENT of the National Civic Art Society, the group trying to stop Gehry's design for the Eisenhower Memorial!!! OMG!!
Seriously, from his tweets to me you can read that this guy has only the most shallow, reactionary understanding of architecture and how it has changed over the last 100 years. What the hell, man?! Why was this man given a platform in Forbes to spout about a topic on which he has no knowledge?
Good heavens I just don't trust journalism any more.
While I think that Gehry's Eisenhower design is a rather large turd, the "counter-proposals" from the Flat Earth...er... Civic Art Society were in no way an improvement.
How do you have a heated debate in 140 characters?
I'm imagining something like a couple of drunks in a bar cursing each other out.
oh man that Cologne cathedral news thread sure melted down fast... I didn't even get to see all the posts... looks like moderation occurred.
Donna have you read his about page? woo boy!
Just wrote Justin Shubow about the Walmart’s of this world. Isn’t it the 90% of garbage that he should be writing about instead of the 10% trying to do good? The AIA had years ago an Orchids & Onions program to encourage publications to write about orchids and onions….nobody would touch it for fear of reprisal. I’m retired and untouchable, what can I do to speak out against the 90%?
looks like the USOC's pick to host the 2024 olympics is Boston. They've got 2 years to pull together a proposal to put to the IOC. Currently it's just between them and Rome...
wow. he talks about philosophy, terrorism, and menswear too. it's like he's jack of no trades, master of none.
if the death of journalism hasn't been declared yet, here it is.
carrera, you could be a journalist and write about orchids and onions! forbes will accept anyone. i'm sure you just have to tell them you're happy to work for the 'exposure' (instead of money)
OMG, that "About" page is painful. I want to say something really, really crass about it but I'll refrain. If anyone wants to guess, I'll confirm if you get it right.
Flat Earth Society, nice one, Pete!
Miles, we tweeted at each other about a dozen times. Twitter is fun, it's like haiku.
^Donna, I'm not sure Forbes is what we usually think of when we talk about journalism. It's essentially a paid blog. And everyone like me who google this and followed through read the article just added a little $ to Justin Shubow's account :)
That about me page was well named. Me me me me me.
Nobody will ever win an argument with that self-centered pompous ass.
I just came across that Forbes thing. Just nasty. Two things really ticked me off. 1) that he conflates all of us into a few big name star. Really, I don't appreciate what Frank Ghery does either and I think it's a bad joke, but I do wish the general public had more 'taste'.
and 2) What the VAST majority of us do - every day - is work that is practical, affordable and intelligent as possible, given the wide variety of constraints we have. Most of my work is nothing special and fits into the various neighborhoods it inhabits, fits a tight budget and makes the owners very happy. I would love to work on high budget flashy projects, but honesty, I also enjoy what I do. I try to make it as awesome as possible - every time.
grrr...what a tool ....
Hmm, autocorrect just tried to change starchitects to arachnids. Kind of an insult to the superior design and engineering skills of spiders, IMO!
Donna, as media lives to sell advertising they only "cover" terror, controversy and outrage. So unless your building is record-setting expensive or looks like a dystopian movie stage set or collapses on completion (preferably all three) it will be ignored, or at beast lambasted because it isn't.
At this point society as seems to lack any other measure. Blame it on advertising?
Actually, I know Aaron betsky. Great guy.
gruen, you're never going to make it with that kind of work.
Didn't you learn anything in architecture school?
Isn't good parametricist an oxymoron?
ok, jumping back in for this one, what does 'happy clients' even mean? Happy at the time of build, still happy in 5 years, 10 years? And who is it we're trying to make happy, the guy paying the bills or the people who use it every day, the people who live and work next to it every day, or the general public who just drives by it occasionally? Those often aren't the same thing, and frankly a lot of the architectural critique I hear going on is the drive-by kind. The happy architectural critic on day 1 is a very different thing than a happy client on year 10, or a happy neighborhood on year 25. And unfortunately, the client may not care about any of those other people, or about anything beyond their own nose on day 1, and what are designers supposed to do then?
Basically my brain is bogged down with short-sighted clients and my own gentrifying neighborhood, and despite the valid critiques on the Katrina houses, I am having a lot of trouble figuring out what the author even thinks that designers should do in the face of those sorts of conditions. The author at once argues that architects are ignorant of real world conditions like weather, and also argues that architecture should serve some broad swath of the population's taste while himself ignoring the real world conditions like finances.
For instance, I live next to a new development going up that I just absolutely HATE. It's a development of condos that in no way address the street, like a complex for people enamored with the idea of echo park that in no way want to actually interact with echo park, except to add traffic to my already overcrowded street. But the actual clients are probably super happy because they're getting the maximum value packed into their land they possibly can, and I'm sure they wouldn't have let construction proceed with anything less. So was the architect supposed to make me, the neighbor with a valid critique, happy? Oh wait, no, that would have gotten them fired.
Rationalist - Good points, maybe it should be the owners that get the critiques.
Great to see you, rationalist! And yes excellent post.
I default to "happy client" because so many of my clients have been homeowners, so they are the user of the project, as well. But I also speak out, I have done so here on lots of threads, about the architect's ethical responsibility to the community in which they practice *as well as* the ethical responsibility to their client and the users. It can be a very hard path, and it's impossible to make everyone happy all of the time!
Carrera, I do think the owners, in the case of developers, should be getting the critique. Like in the case of these condos rationalist mentions - they'er clearly not as successful for the community as for the developer, so one would hope the market would speak to the developer's selfishness.
Donna - Had the honor to do a project with Charles Moore….as I drove him through a big city he sat there and pointed out the window….”that’s architecture….that’s not”…..for miles he commented, most not. I think it’s that simple, it is or it isn’t and all the critics need to do is point out the difference. Bring back Orchids & Onions..…keep it black or white…..educating the public and owners of the distinction will make a big difference….critiquing architecture accomplishes nothing, critiquing things that are not architecture will make all the difference. They are critiquing the wrong things.
Unfortunately the residential market in my area is so incredibly tight that people will buy anything, in certain areas in particular. I wouldn't buy one of these, but I have no doubt that somebody will. Carrera, you helped me see exactly the issue that gets me—we critique a whole project, and call that architectural critique, but it's really about architecture, development, urban planning, etc. Critiquing competition entries for example for being too flashy is just stupid, because that's what wins competitions. At that point, the architects are just competing to even get the opportunity to engage with the client and/or end user, but they often can't win that opportunity with something the end user would actually like because there's some competition jury there wanting a sexy rendering to publish.
I also live a rapidly gentrifying area - I'm really lucky to have bought at the bottom of the market - there's no way we could afford to live here if we were buying today.
Sadly my main takeaway from the meeting is that many of my neighbors not only can't understand the basics of urban development but likely struggle to remember to put on their pants before their shoes in the morning. Sheesh.
"Gateway" sites here are slated for large scale commercial development. It's basically a gold rush with zero concern for traffic, nature, quality of life, etc.
My Communities Idea of a "Gateway Project" is a bus maintenance storage building with some administrative offices. Now that is traffic, nature quality of life and of course pedestrian friendly. That is after they tear down the turn of the century Brick Masonry building which is a mini Tate Gallery building waiting to be discovered.
Guess what!!!! I just figured out my archinect password, so I can post from a computer now!!!!
Anyway.... That sucks Donna. That house I was whining about is only 1700 sf. A bank will never finance that price. Maybe he will get what he deserves, and have to drop the price 80,000 dollars after it sits on the market for MONTHS. His reasoning is that there is marble in the bathrooms. Idiot.
So now we are looking at foreclosures. Have any of you ever gone that route? It all seems so complicated. Has anyone ever had any luck just knocking on doors, and offering to buy someone's home that isn't currently for sale?
Think the market will tank before our lease is up in June?
Sarah, I know a couple here who bought possibly the sweetest house/lot in the city by getting to know the person who owned it and asking for the ability to buy it first when she was ready to move. It was in their neighborhood so they were able to tell the lady who had lived there for generations that they were committed to staying in the neighborhood and raising their family there. it worked.
IMO it can't hurt to send letters to people telling them that you like their house and when they decide to sell you'd like to talk to them about it. Some people hate the thought of listing their house with a realtor and all the paperwork, so they'd appreciate a direct contact; some people love their house and really want it to go to someone else who will love it too.
About to list my house on the market too. I can't find a house I like that I can afford but I have to move closer to work, putting way too many miles on, wasting time driving. Probably into an apartment, which I'm not excited about because I'm going to miss my garden. Real estate is so tricky, house prices here are insanely high and the housing stock is all either "luxury" or fixer-upper. Meaning I have to overbuy crap I don't want or buy a money pit that is too expensive in the first place that I can't afford to fix.
I bought my current house as a short sale, a pre-foreclosure. The previous owners owed more on it than we paid for it so the bank had to eat the difference. It wasn't complicated for us, but I think we got lucky. Having extremely good credit and a down payment helped.
well, hopefully you can sell your current house for way more than it's worth so you have some of that equity to throw at the new one. if they all got too expensive, yours should have too. good luck.
Yes, my house has increased in value quite a bit, but it is super old and needs repairs too. There are houses on my block that are selling for 500k that are bigger and nicer than mine. There are lots of people flipping houses in my hood. I've accumulated some debt from being laid off and starting a business. The business is 25 miles from my house so that's why I need to move, but it is in an even more expensive area (the Hamptons of Colorado) which is good for business but not for buying a house, there is a hot investor market and wealthy investors snatch up properties by outbidding regular people and then relist for 45k more than they bought them for 2 months before. Fixer uppers are still $350k-400k. Some condos can be cheaper, but then they may have $250 a month HOAs. Going to live in an apartment for a few years, save up money to (hopefully) buy a piece of land and build a house 5-10 years down the road. Or design-build a live-work space.
I would to. I'd give people things just because I could, just to make their day.
I'm not rich, but I try to do this anyway. I had lunch with my son at a Steak-n-Shake last weekend (local company, excellent ads and graphic identity, delicious shakes, don't judge), and the waitress came to us and said "I'm the only server on the floor right now, so I just want to warn you things might not be as quick as usual" then she did a great job holding down a quite heavy load. I tipped her 65%, which was still only ten bucks, but I hope it made her day easier.
We have Steak-n-Shake down here, too. I don't like the fries, or the weird yankee chili, but the shakes are great!
As a mounting body of research is showing, wealth can actually change how we think and behave—and not for the better. Rich people have a harder time connecting with others, showing less empathy to the extent of dehumanizing those who are different from them. They are less charitable and generous. They are less likely to help someone in trouble. And they are more likely to defend an unfair status quo. If you think you’d behave differently in their place, meanwhile, you’re probably wrong: These aren’t just inherited traits, but developed ones. Money, in other words, changes who you are.
Boston Globe
As a car's sticker price increases from say, a Honda Civic to something like this fine German automobile, so does the likelihood that its driver will cut you off at a four-way stop or refuse to wait for a pedestrian in the crosswalk.
Luxury Car Drivers Are Jerks, Says UC Berkeley Study
One of my dream homes is on the market too. Unfortunately it's about 5,000% over my budget. Someday maybe...
Miles I heard about a study in which people played a game of Monopoly where one player was given more money to start and got to use both dice while the other player rolled with only one. The 'rich" player also was given better snacks during the game. During the course of the game the "rich" player actually started to believe that they were entitled to their good fortune. This was repeated many times with the same results.
Speaking of neighborhoods and rebuilding, my garden district historic neighborhood was hit by a tornado in October and a few houses, mostly oldish unkept up bungalows have been torn down. This has me worried that some mini mcmansion pseudo french provinicial/fake acadian style snout houses might appear in their place. even though this is a historic area these styles are taking over down here. i have no problem with the style if it's done right but i know they won't be. Our neighborhood association seems a little lame and so there will probably be no issues with it. Particularly since back in the sixties someone was able to put up a number of tract style apartment houses that all look horrible yet survived the tornado.
The Money-Empathy Gap
An article on the Monopoly study. Here in the fabulous Hamptons I see this played out every day in real life.
Did the "rich" players also get exclusive use of the "Get Out of Jail Free" card?
And Vado, if your garden district is anything like where I'm living, they will replace the those houses with bungalow-style homes with front facing garages. Like this:
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