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> plausible that LA would look much the same

This is actually something I liked in contrast to earlier futurism. If I look around me here in Europe I see that buildings rarely get removed once they stand. The last time the face of cities here changed was after the Second World War. If I look at pictures from the 60s rarely anything changed, except maybe the introduction of some pedestrian zones.



That seems overly broad - a surviving old city tourist area might be well preserved but elsewhere, post-war city rebuilding programs were cheap, rushed and ugly. Even later development is unloved because "high-design" of the time was infected by Brutalism. These already troubled urban centres were then hollowed-out by economic troubles in the 70s leading to areas of dereliction.

Over the past few decades, urban regeneration programs have been widespread to remove the bleak post-war prefab concrete monstrosities. Unfortunately what is replacing them is cheap and uninspired compared to pre-1900 architecture so I can't see us valuing it that much in 100 years.


We don't keep those buildings because we value their architecture, we keep them because we are using them.


That isn't true. We protect valuable architecture with preservation orders. Usage isn't really a factor - tenants of actively used buildings will be given notice and the site redeveloped if doing so is legal and profitable.




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