From Seattle to New York City, Minneapolis to Dallas, boxy apartment and condo buildings sporting bland facades, metallic or colored cladding and a generally flat aesthetic seem to dominate new urban developments these days. Surprisingly similar in style from one place to the next, they have been dubbed works of “developer chic” or “fast-casual architecture” and branded blandmarks or LoMo (Low Modern), generally by those critical of their appearance. Some of their look is a byproduct of “value engineering,” a stripping away of decorative flourishes for the sake of saving a few dollars (the bane of many artistic architects) but there is more to the story.

As with virtually any architecture, costs do naturally play a role as well in shaping these structures — ornate brickwork may look beautiful, but even as a decorative facade layer the material adds loads of weight and a lot of expense to a cheaper wood-framed building.  As for the stylistic convergence more broadly, much of this traces to economic and other factors that are essentially the same across cities in America and otherwise: high demand for affordable housing that has to meet a similar set of safety and other code requirements.

In many cities, housing is in short supply and a lot of area is zoned for single-family residential, forcing developers to fit as much housing as they can into whatever plots are left available. Where they do get built, these structures face restrictions often derived from international building codes, calling for formulaic approaches (for instance: a concrete base floor with five wooden floors on top) resulting in a roughly similar size and shape. Facades with portions that are recessed or pushed out are common features, too, again usually the product of local ordinances and design review boards that demand physical variety from facades.

To some critics, these cookie-cutter creations represent an aesthetic crisis. To others, they seem like harbingers of gentrification. As any urbanist knows, though, a lack of affordable housing is a serious and pervasive problem neither caused nor solved by architects as such. Architecture critic Kate Wagner looks at the situation pragmatically, arguing that “affordable mid and high-rise towers are the most effective way to house the greatest number of people on the smallest parcel of land, something that’s desperately needed in places like San Francisco, where the value of land is so high.”

For those who would point to the much-discussed failures of 20th-century mass-housing attempts, she writes: “Modernist public housing was not the failure of architecture it was the failure of people—through racial prejudices, misguided and poorly thought out policies, ugly politics, and economic greed, people caused the public housing of the past to fail.” Additionally, a lot of lessons learned from that era are incorporated into even the most boring of boxy apartments, including mixed-use programs that activate areas and bring in more than just residents.

More broadly, there is a case to be made that what was once more of an art has become something of a science, whatever one’s opinion of the effects. Architects have always been in the business of balancing aesthetics and pragmatics, form and function, but increasingly their work is constrained by outside forces, including but not limited to client budgets, safety considerations and municipal rules.

Over the long term, the sometimes-shoddy construction materials and methods of this currently trending typology may be the seeds of its undoing. It’s possible these will be looked back on as a mistake. Maybe, though, the same thing will happen here that has with other approaches and styles over architectural history: people will come to appreciate the beauty and functionality in what currently seems mundane if not abhorrent. In the meantime, architects can only do so much — it’s up to cities and their citizens to accept reality or rethink entrenched paradigms and consider the merits of changing zoning limitations, restrictive codes and perhaps also the benchmarks by which we judge architecture to be good or bad.

Amsterdam, Zurich, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Oslo and more are all great cities of the world which are succeeding in making the lives better for their residents via innovative transportation policies. Over the years, Streetfilms producers have “visited many places we thought were doing best practices.” This group of videos they created along the way highlights amazing urban environments around the world.

“Founded in 2006, Streetfilms has become the go-to organization for educational films about sustainable transportation, and inspires action and behavioral change worldwide. Individuals, public agencies, non-profit organizations, schools, and transportation advocacy groups use Streetfilms to educate decision makers and make change for livable streets in their communities.” View more here.

A London architect has is working to sketch a new city each day, mining his imagination and experience for fresh ideas for a full year, a practice inspired in part by the failures of modern urban planning.

Peter Barber is sharing the results of his work online, driven by an architectural theorist.”The idea arose from Lewis Mumford’s assertion that modernism has ‘failed to produce even a rough draft for a decent neighbourhood’, and from a pub remark made by my friend and colleague Ben Stringer, who said that you ought to be able to design a city in 10 minutes” — or at least: the idea for one.

These are not meant to be fully polished master plans, but rather an exploration of the shape of cities through quick sketches. They range in scale and region as well, from towns in Spanish ravines to fisherman islands and farming cooperatives in the United Kingdom. Among others, he has imagined a city to wrap the existing city of London, wondering what that might look like as well as how it would function and relate to the historical metropolitan heart of England.

Embedded in this experiment, though, is also a call to action for architects and planners: sketch, think and design, even if it’s speculative, just to keep ideas flowing. “I’m an inveterate sketcher. The project structures that a bit,” says Barber. “In the course of my day it’s a little 10 minute mental workout, kind of light relief too, and a chance to think beyond the here and now. I wonder if the project will remind people about the joy of jotting down a thought in a quick sketch, the sketch book as a place to escape to, a place to be playful, dreamy, speculative, idealistic even.”

Of course, he also hopes some good ideas will come out of the exercise. “We need to think deeply about our priorities and how those might be reflected in the production and arrangement of space and how we want our cities, towns, villages to be designed,” he explains In designing, he is also researching, and thinking about what’s already built. “To a significant extent the layout of our cities, and London is a very good example, are products of neo-liberal economics, the commodification of housing and the arbitrary flow of global capital. In London, which is surely one of the richest cities the world has ever known, this is leading to misery and a segregated city, with 170,000 homeless people and 20,000 empty investment flats, while social housing bequeathed to us by a more idealistic post-war generation is bulldozed.” Of course, one always has to be careful, too: architects are notorious for thinking about city plans first in terms of buildings, and only later in terms of practical considerations.

These 15 bus shelters from Germany express a distinctive design aesthetic that reflects the tension between stolid practicality and startling creativity.

These two bus shelters face each other from opposite sides of the main road running through Durrnhof, Bavaria.

Captured by Flickr member pilot_micha in June of 2009, the bus shelters were constructed with stereotypical teutonic utility in mind. At some later date, however, their interior walls were whimsically painted, likely by local schoolchildren as an urban beautification project.

XX Marks the Stop

The most interesting bus shelter in the world? Well, maybe in Hanover, the capital city of Lower Saxony and a town famed for its annual commercial fairs. The half-million-strong city also hosted Expo 2000, one of the last and largest world fairs. The bus shelter above is situated in the Königsworther Platz and was photographed by Flickr member jaime.silva in June of 2009.

Hull or High Water

Viewed from both sides, this curiously boat-shaped bus shelter can be found in Hanover’s Rathaus/Friederichswall district. Flickr member jaime.silva snapped the scene in August of 2009.

“In 1994,” according to Flickr member Tim Boric, “nine tram and bus stops in Hannover were redesigned in totally different ways by international artists,” including this one credited to Italian designer Massimo Iosa Ghini. We’d “keel” to have one of these kool kreative bus stops in our neighborhood!

Das Otto

Students at the regional school in Bad Kleinen, near Hamburg, enjoy waiting for their ride home at this shamelessly Simpsons-esque bus shelter. Neither faux-Otto nor his 2D passengers seem particularly pleased… Matt Groening might sport a similar grimace should he ever see this. Kudos to Flickr member Patrick, who captured the less-than-flattering homage in July of 2013.

Smile You Wait

This charming little bus shelter perfectly complements the peaceful, pastoral landscape of the Agricultural Region south of Hamburg. The same can be said for the anonymous work of cheerful, colorful graffiti art on the shelter’s inside back wall. Flickr member Csaba Lehel (infodog) captured the rainy day scene in mid-April of 2018.

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Das Bus 15 Quirky Kitschy German Bus Shelters

Central yet unused, the central median of New York City’s Park Avenue is the subject of a series of spectacular and speculative redesigns — from rock-climbing walls and waterfalls to kayak commuter lanes — thanks to a creative ideas competition.

Participating architects, designers and planners were given free reign to re-imagine this major thoroughfare spanning across Manhattan, and took that liberty to heart. Their pitches for Beyond the Centerline, organized by an NYC real estate company, are largely quite extreme.

Among other ideas, short-listed contestants offered up images of ice-skating rinks, elevated basketball courts, yoga studies and Modernist art exhibition spaces. Some are fun and others functional, offering alternative ways to commute by boat, for instance.

Some are focused on greening the dense city, creating space for landscapes and natural environments to break up the loud and busy car-filled route. A few even suggest incorporating forest habitats for urban wildlife. Many of the proposals are vertical in nature, seeking to maximize the small footprint offered by introducing shops, cafes, markets, theaters and other above-ground and underground amenities.

“While Park Avenue, with its median plantings and periodic art installations, remains one of the world’s most iconic commercial boulevards, I have long believed that we can and must be far more imaginative in how we encounter and utilize such a precious urban commodity,” said the contest creators. “Our hope is that this contest and these proposals will spark a real conversation about what can be done to activate Park Avenue’s center line for a new generation of New Yorkers.” Winners will receive up to $25,000 for their creative work, and while it may never be built, hopefully it can at least get people thinking about how to develop underutilized space in cities.