I stumbled upon this photo of a new suburban housing development in Markham - and it's actually a pretty great urban form. Dense, good scale, minimal setbacks. This is what suburbs should look like.
But then you look a little closer and see the actual material selections & architectural details on the buildings and just have to wonder
why?
Grand Cornell Brownstones by
Jimmy Wu, on Flickr
For contrast, here's a somewhat similar new housing development in the UK. Why couldn't they use a coherent, attractive material palette something more like this? It's not like this would cost more. What is it about all of our mass-market builders that makes them so much more aesthetically challenged than those everywhere else?
Chobham Manor by
Jimmy Wu, on Flickr