Where's your sense of fun?

Can we afford to build beautifully? I believe that decades of inflation and failed fiscal policy have forced the real estate industry into short-termism. Viability is so tight that developers find themselves with two options: hike prices, or squeeze every possible cost out of a building’s design, materials and, ultimately, its soul. While I think we all innately feel like the modern built environment is lacking something, this idea was explained in a book I’m reading called The Great Wave. In it, the author David Hackett Fischer investigates the major price fluctuations in history. These are waves of high inflation - socially and politically corrosive - followed by price equilibrium. Fischer shows how these waves leave their mark on our buildings. He describes the windows of price stability as fertile ground for building – and, I'd argue, for a kind of speculation that wouldn't be possible during inflation. The churches, homes and civic buildings of those periods capture the optimism and prosperity of their time, evoking emotion through beautiful architecture that we prize and go to great lengths to preserve. I’m writing a separate essay on this idea that will be published shortly. As part of the research for the piece, I wanted to speak to people in real estate who may not share this monetary thesis, but who are vocal about current development. @Cobylefko is an urbanist, real estate developer, lecturer and author of Building Optimism: Why Our World Looks the Way It Does, and How to Make It Better. Here's a short trailer from our discussion on creating beautiful buildings: structures that aren’t just aesthetically pleasing, but that meet our needs in different and harder-to-name ways. Coby is an old romantic in a world of yields, and IRR, and price per sq ft. That’s not to say he’s naïve; listen and you’ll hear a commercially savvy operator, but he’s also alive to what we lose when we settle for - in his words - “sad and dreary places”.