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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I'm a little confused in that your second quote suggests that critiques of design should not include the wider body of structures or the prevalence of certain styles and materials, but in your first quotes when you say "there was a unifying vision that is evident" which suggests that the uniformity (or monotony) was in fact a product of design. So if that's the case, wouldn't critiques of the results of that "unifying vision" be de facto critiques of design? And if so, does that mean both aspects of urban design should receive equal critical consideration? And if not, what arguments are there for one aspect to take precedence over the other?
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Aesthetic quality of a skyline is subjective and there can be many different ways to get to an attractive end result. I think Paris and Hong Kong both look interesting but they are very different. It is overly simplistic to say that there is a quality like variety that you can sprinkle into any skyline to make it better.
Vancouver is unusual for how well it turned out given how recently it was developed and how deliberately it was planned. I don't think it has the nicest skyline in North America but most of the nicer ones are older or have an architectural mix that is more or less a historic accident and not something that anybody planned explicitly. I think almost any North American city that started with clean slate type areas like False Creek in the 80's would have done much worse than Vancouver.
It's actually kind of depressing. There are lots of beautiful urban environments out there but many were created by accident and most new ones are mostly bad. The heavily "planned" ones are probably worse than average. It's not unlike the wider economy which works okay but isn't really understood by anybody.
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