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Restoring aesthetic beauty in architecture through form and debate will recharge a culture in desperate need of it.
At the Abundance Futures / Live conference last year, Ezra Klein called for the restoration of beauty as a key public-policy consideration. Though Klein has not shied away from challenging certain left-wing orthodoxies, this statement is perhaps his most surprising. Since World War II, those lamenting the uglification of our built environment have typically been conservatives. They are increasingly part of an aging, fading establishment, such as King Charles III, or figures on the respectable fringes, such as the late philosopher Roger Scruton and the late architectural polemicist Leon Krier.
So it is bracing to hear Klein urging the political Left not only to depart from overregulation but also to embrace beauty. “We cannot have a politics afraid of having a view about what is beautiful because a politics that is not beautiful is a politics nobody wants,” he said. “An abundance that is not beautiful is an abundance nobody will allow you to build.” Klein understands here what cultural conservatives have maintained from the margins for decades. If our cities, homes, and streets are not aesthetically appealing, citizens will oppose their construction. Beauty is the key to unlocking abundance.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Daily Wire
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Paul Shakeshaft is the Director of Development & Policy Initiatives at the Manhattan Institute and the Director of the Empire Society.