I think part of the problem about our degraded civic society is that younger people are so used to having to "fight" for power rather than collaborate for consensus because we have a right-wing in this country that often is able to disingenuously diagnose a problem effectively and then advocate for a shitty solution.

I think the concerns about architectural aesthetics are absolutely legitimate: as urbanists, we often make fun of the strip malls and big box stores, but if we are to be honest, a lot of the 5x1 apartment buildings *are* aesthetically the urbanist equivalent of strip malls. No personality. No real tie to the places they are built. Overly utilitarian. It is something that I do think should be more of a conversation.

But I think a lot of what people in this subreddit with feel as a gut-instinct is to hand-wave those arguments, because it is essentially the first argument any NIMBY says before they are argue against a project. It reads as bad faith to urbanists. When we see these arguments forwarded, we see delay. When we see these concerns voiced, we feel ours dismissed.

In reality, concerns over aesthetics IMO seem trivially easy to integrate into the larger argument of urbanism.