Alain de Botton has an idea that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, when it comes to cities anyways. He also proposes a system for evaluating the beauty of the world's cities (spoiler: most cities don't qualify).
Laura Bliss shares a newly released video by renowned writer and philosopher Alain de Botton that makes strong claims about the beauty of cities—such as the idea that beauty, when evaluated as a characteristic of cities, is not a subjective matter.
"But in the case of cities, beauty is objective, argues Alain de Botton in a provocative new video—and saying that it's not is a danger to the quality of urban life," writes Bliss.
De Botton lists six characteristics as more "scientific" criteria for the beauty of cities, including examples like "order," "compactness," and "a sense of the local."
Remarks Bliss: "De Botton has no problem pointing out which cities meet these standards (Paris, New York, Barcelona) and which ones don't (Phoenix, Munich, but also, 'most cities,' all over the world)."
On that last point, it seems de Botton agrees with Frank Gehry's infamous sentiments about the quality of architecture these days. And in laying out a list of prescriptions, as he does, de Botton's method strikes as similar to that of Prince Charles.
The video can be found below.
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