Comments by "Holger P." (@holger_p) on "The Aesthetic City" channel.

@olehleb In communist times, yes, city-planning were easier. But many of these buildings were sold to private owners after 1990. Especially Dresden sold 100% of it's houses to investors, and got completly debt free. So now, they cannot decide what to do with the buildings, especially tearing down anything is kind of impossible. They can prevent owners from tearing things down. They can allow and prohibit - but not command. Outside of city centres, you don't have anything like baroque ensembles, cause they are definitly younger. And for residential areas around downtown the explanation is very easy: The center were bomded, the outscirts were not. So they are kept. That's mainly the buildings from 1860-1920, the beginning of appartment buildings. The old appartment buildings were also not well maintained in communist times, due to lack of materials and money, but they were the first ones, renovated after 1990.
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Discussion is just around, building it old style or new style. Building today in a look like 1750, gives the feeling of a theme park, like Disneyland. If you present building, people would guess they are century olds, and you tell them "built in 2014", it feels like a fake, like you try to pretend something. So just allow this thought to be discussed by people.
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So obviously city marketing has a job left to do. Entire east can be considered grey, before 1990, but's it's really only lack of paint, of course there were green trees, flowers etc. But entire east has changed since 1990.
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@callsigndd9ls897 Right, I would have simply said, there was no paint. Additionally, this was the traditional style since 200 years. People didn't know any different. You put flowers in the garden, if you want color. Demolishing in the west was a period in the 70ies, when enough apparments were built after the war, but sense of history was not really developed. Time of beginning oil and gas heating, instead of coal. Directly after war, any intact building was used as much as it could.
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Since you can build a city, on a green field, of course you can build a city, also on a place where a city was before. It's poets with such silly phrases, not scientist. Cities don't raise, they are simply built.
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What you think is bad, living in them ? Actually the loook from outside is worse then from inside out. You can say it's kind of boring, to have the same style copied so often, but if you live in one appartment, you don't care how many copies the appartment has.
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Cities should never be built for tourism, they are built to live in. Otherwise you create a museum. If you want to do that, take a green field in the country side. Las Vegas is built this style.
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@exchangAscribe i have no idea what you talk about. I did not use words like pretending or shit. On an empty space, you can create a new designed building or check old fotos and recreate buildings that have been there before. If you Design a City to be an attraction, it's what I call creating Disneyland. A copy of an original, just at the original space. You cannot recreate the aging, the Patina. It has the appeal of beeing artificial.
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@exchangAscribe you seem to forget iconic style or nostalgic values also. It's not attraction or beauty, they just got used to it. Like most people still Like the music of their youth. No matter what age. Not because the music is good, but because It's connected with memories. Now people are split, if they like to hear a cover band of the beatles or an Elvis double, or if they accept he's gone.
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@exchangAscribe no idea what this means. A copy for show is a copy. If mona lisa burns down, and you hang a copy, it's better than nothing , but not as good aa before.
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@exchangAscribe so why you are writing to say nothing? And how do you know what I know? You are just guessing. If you are not aware of original and copy, it's a pity. If something grows and people like it, it's different from something designed to be atrractive. Order of events is reversed, if you don't notice. The hugest difference is building houses to live in, with functionality, vs building houses to take a picture from. Inside and outside don't match any more. Facade and function differ. Even for the church. It has 99% of people just looking at it. It's not needed for prayer, it's just a decorative building. Well you havent left any note, you understand any of my words at all.
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It's private, but not by citizens. They don't have that much money. It's simply international investors in real estates. There is no neighborhood designer. If a "square" has 60 owners, they will have 60 different ideas and wishes. It's hard to create something like a common design.
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Buildings are just too expensive, to destroy everything you dislike. You have to find a way to live with it. And you never know what view future generations will have on things. So don't wipe out any era.
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It's not so much by the people, it's simply done by investors. The city council just had to agree the designs.
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You have pretty much of it Downtown Quebec or Montreal. It's just missing the mix of centuries and you had the enormous growth around the year 1900. Don't know what you say here about Lefties and Nazis. That's really Nonsense, that's not their topic. There is a discussion between preservers and modernizers, but that's not a political issue, more a discussion among artists/architects. The fear is more, to create something like Venice in Las Vegas. A copy of something. Or in Canada I have seen Mt. Tremblant, a Sci Resort, that looks like Disneyland, an artificial designed city. Cut be a copy of Nice in the swiss Montains or something similiar crazy. You cannot create charme.
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Why do people talk , like citizens have to decide, what to do with buildings. It's in property of someone, and the owner can decide what to do. Nobody else.
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For a stretch of 800m it's kind of the only wheelchair or childcar accessable street to the river. People are kinda forced to used it, there is no other walkway. This, combined with absolutly no restaurants at the river directly, really pushes the demand for food into this street. And the area had nothing in the backyard in the beginning, as it all were ruins. Todays it's one of many, but tourism has increased, so there are still enough customers.
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@SiqueScarface don't know why you are repeating me, almost word by word.
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@SiqueScarface Of, that's of course important, to replace "wheelchair and childcar" with "general pedestrian".
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Don't put so much emotions in the discussion. Pointing out Pro and Con of ideas, must be possible, without you considering it hate. In Vienna nothing has been copied, it was build from scratch, not trying to keep something that was there before. Building architects and city architects, or landscape architects have different goals and they have to cooperate somehow.
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@DinoCon Can you elaborate your .... What's going on in Detroit or St. Louis ? The point in USA is, there is more wasteland, more space. Instead of renewing a city in place, people just go somewhere else and build a new city. Same for industry. Building a new plant on a field, is simpler, than reusing the space of old plants. In Germany this is not possible. Space is limited.
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There is no relation from wealth to beauty. Rich people often dress ugly. And the other part of the story is freedom. Each landlord is allowed as much freedom as possible, the city has very limited possibilities to influence the design. This is not a dictatorship with a central planning office and commands what to do. It's democracy. All they can do is actually deny permission to do something, not giving commands what to do.
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That's really Nonsense. Such a thinking doesn't exist in Europe at all. Buildings to last 50years is more an American idea. French brutalism from the 70ies is also not considered successfull today any more. But when it was built, it was considered ultra-modern and made for eternity. So it was with the east german architecture.
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@Rozarez213 do you want to confirm or contradict me ?
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@Rozarez213 now we are down to 25years ? Who gave you this idea ? People still live in there after 50 years, why you think there are structural problems ? A design getting out of style is different from a building not functioning any more. It's a blame of germans, if you say they copy russians. Not even the era is correct, cause the buildings from factory made parts are from post 1975. And americans simply are faster in buying houses. They demolish city districts to build new ones, without any idea of preserving the past. Gentrification in europe means renovation of old buildings. In america it's destruction. The movie " up" starts with this scenario.
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So what's the difference to Disneyland than ? Or to build Venice in Las Vegas ? It's a copy. Here it's in historic place, but still a copy. Tourism is nothing a city can live from, it makes around 5% of the economic power in German average.
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@GeorgRv22 who wants to live in a theme park ? It has an artificial appearance. It's like beauty made by plastic surgary. Too perfect looks unnatural
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@GeorgRv22 It's about wiping out history. It's the look people are familiar with today, people got used to it too. There is no feeling like "it's so ugly, we want to get rid of it". It's more "It's so cheap to live here, I don't want to move away to make room for more millionaires". This is much more important to people than the design. It's simply put: gentrification. Actually I know a cook living there on minimum wage. It would become a city with nobody living in it. That's already the case in other cities, where office buildings are in domination. In historic dresden, it's more Hotels and boarding houses, or sometimes real estate investors, but no real people living there.
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@GeorgRv22 Exactly, it was ruins and wasteland, nothing had to be destroyed, nobody had to move. That's a very easy decision. Everything is better than ruins and wasteland. Although the statement before was "we keep the ruins as a war monument". That's why nobody touched it. The entire waterfront complex, also build in eastern block- style, just with already more color and some little design elements from the 80ies, is also kept. (It's mainly the Hilton Hotel) For the other "communist" building next to Frauenkirche, the Kulturpalast, an event location, there was a strong demand to keep it. It's history and became part of the city, even if maybe ugly. Since it was technicaly not modern any more, the complete outside shell was kept, and the interiour was replaced with a concert hall. Preservation is to document what happened at a place, to keep up memories. Not to pick the most beautiful design.
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If everybody would build classic one, people would get bored, and like something else soon. People like the variety. This gives character.
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It's not an attack from outside, it's people of Dresden discussing with each other. Cause you have several heritages, and you have to think which one to keep. Destroy a building from 1970, to restore a building that has been in this place in 1870 is a tough question.
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But the difference to think about is, do you rebuild just the way it was, or take the chance to build something new. In the USA they hadn't had a war, they constantly destroy their old buildings to build something new.
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No, nobody. Who came up with this idea ? Nazis have not left any important buildings in Dresden.
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Definitly not. It's open for all. I've seen some Sighs recently.
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You say, todays people are to stupid or non-creative to build a cosy home. That's definitly wrong. We need more creativity and experiments, not just copies of the past. It's OK at a few places.
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