“The Government correctly believes that the ugliness of new development is one major reason why people oppose it” 🇬🇧
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/britains-newbuilds-ugly/
The article is full of deliberations on "pleasant hedges" and "glorious neo-traditionalism". Concepts like energy efficiency or even ergonomy apparently aren't in scope of interest of an average Telegraph reader 🤷
@kravietz part of that is cultural in nature. I live in the Netherlands; our building style is *very* similar to that of the UK. Energy-efficiency is piss poor due to an extremely mild climate and very cheap local natural gas. 60s and 70s houses here were built with huge single-pane windows. It looked cool, and heating was nearly free.
I have the impression that in Northern and Central/Eastern Europe, there was never any doubt that a house *has* to shelter you from the cold.
@kravietz Paywalled, but I wonder if attempts to squeeze labour costs are at fault. The house I live in was built in the 1960s - each brick laid by hand. That's very rare to see nowadays, it's prefabricated wherever possible, yet newbuilt prices are still going up and up.