[soleri]

Pictures like these make me cry.

It's a kind of intellectual parlor game to consider a civilization's high point, or a variant thereof, the decade when a city was at its peak - Paris in the 20s, Vienna in the 1890s, Los Angeles in the 30s, New York in the 50s, etc. But to see such heartbreaking beauty makes me realize the terrible toll prosperity and modernism took on our cities. Canada always seemed to me the most civilized country in North America, but even here you see how foolish and wasteful we've been with our most sublime creations: cities.