Nothing has brought into clarity my issues with the things around me as much as trying to genuinely appreciate them.

I always look at newish buildings and wonder what they will look like in 40 or 50 years. If they will look clean. If the materials will age well, or if they will look cheap and dilapidated.
I question the variety of materials used in modern building façades. They can't all age well.

And at some point you imagine the architects just probably aren’t all invested in how sustainable the appearance of their building is long term. But the cities they're built in have to live with those buildings for 100s of years. Is it going to look cheap and slapdash in the future?

Large downtown buildings in the US are ambitious ventures that are only possible when funded by large corporations who consolidate wealth ridiculously and often the companies can’t even manage it, half the buildings go empty as the space was intended to be rented out to other companies.

Is this the best we can do as our impetus for these great cities of ours?

A bunch of ugly corporate buildings that, when I look at them, all I can see is the attractive yet inoffensive, soulless, sleek modern ambition of one or a handful of ambitious, usually white guys, preying on the success of their real estate gamble by hoping hundreds of people who don’t even know them either willingly reroute their lives to intersect with the existence of that building in pursuit of their own dreams or are forced to reroute their existence through these depressing buildings nobody asked for because of the contrived job opportunities offering minimum wage as you polish the floors or take out the trash of the dreams of someone else who probably isn’t even from here.