Form Follows Feeling: My Catholic Aesthetic, Common Edge, September 15, 2026, James Rojas
This is great, and this is what I mean when I write about seeing ordinary objects in a “sacramental” manner. This piece is not about stuff, though, but about the built environment writ large:
Catholicism made the invisible visible. Love, fear, suffering, death, hope, guilt, forgiveness, and salvation were transformed into objects, images, light, sound, movement, and ritual. An idea did not remain an abstraction. It became something you could see, touch, smell, hear, and physically experience.
None of this was necessary in a strictly functional sense. And that may be precisely the point.
These objects, colors, sounds, smells, movements, and rituals created meaning. They connected the physical world to memory, emotion, family, community, and something larger than ourselves. The physical environment became a container for feelings that could not always be explained through words. Long before I studied architecture or urban planning, I was learning that space could communicate without words.
Outside my grandmother’s house and the Catholic Church, however, I experienced Los Angeles very differently. Much of the city’s built environment seemed shallow to me. Buildings, parking lots, streets, and even the sky itself could feel ordinary, repetitive, lifeless. I was supposed to appreciate the clean lines, simplicity, and efficiency of Southern California’s suburban midcentury modern houses, but they rarely moved me.
This is very nice, and the kind of perspective we need in building and thinking about places. Read the whole thing.
My conversations with 13- to 25-year-olds revealed the core tension: a longing for a past when they were tech-free and owned their own attention.
“I am nostalgic for a time when I was present, when my generation was between 5 and 10, when we were still doing things in the real world,” shared 19-year-old Nancy, a university student in London, “I don’t remember what I watched yesterday on TikTok, but I remember what I did years ago when I didn’t have a phone.”
This is really interesting. I think initially, the phenomenon of some kind of “analog revival”—primarily the rise in vinyl record sales—was widely seen as basically a fad or aesthetic trend. However, I think there is something psychological and almost philosophical going on here. (This is also what I mean when I write about record players as sacramental.)
What began with a resurgence of interest in old technology has morphed into a real critique of the smartphone, social media, and digital-everything life we have now. I think these are deeply related, because those old technologies were built for specific, limited functions, didn’t track you, didn’t advertise to you, etc. That is a real difference of experience and design.
Gen Z didn’t choose digital overload. They inherited it. But they are now doing something no previous generation has done: deliberately dismantling the attention economy from the inside — one dumb phone, one detox cabin, one conversation, one deleted app at a time. The analog future isn’t a retreat. It’s a correction.
Also read the whole thing.
The Great Aesthetics Debate of 2026, The New Urban Order, Diana Lind, June 7, 2026
Something else has shifted a lot recently: the conversation about architectural and urban planning aesthetics. Questions about what architecture should look like have become unusually heated lately.
My sense is that there’s increasing discomfort with basic modernism in architecture. A growing chorus of people are tired with the prevailing design aesthetic that we’ve been living with that somehow went from the Lever Building to boxy, panelized 5-over-1 buildings that you find everywhere these days.
Lind is skeptical, as most housing advocates are, that better architecture is a silver bullet for getting people to like cities or new construction:
So when I read writers contending that we should embrace pastiche and Pre-War styles to match people’s innate preferences, I’m skeptical. Yes, many people prefer McMansions over 42-story buildings because that’s what they’ve grown up around. But it’s not an immutable preference.
And here’s what I find most puzzling about the aesthetics push coming from the YIMBY world specifically: it contradicts the movement’s own deepest argument. YIMBYs have made a career out of arguing against people’s primal desires to keep others out of their neighborhoods — contending that those preferences, however sincerely felt, cause real harm and can be changed through education and policy. If you can shift public opinion on density and development, why would aesthetic preference be the one thing that’s fixed and must be deferred to?
But she also takes the question of architectural quality and style seriously. Good piece, and good to pair with my write-up of a very good discussion on this question.
The Iron Law of Air Travel, Changing Lanes, Andrew Miller, February 3, 2026
The Iron Law reigns. Your customers will search Expedia, see your $400 fare next to a $200 fare, and book the $200 fare, and crack wise about how “no matter how much each class pays, we all arrive at the destination at the same time”. Then they will complain on X about bag fees and cramped seats without changing their behaviour.
Basically, customers will always opt for the lowest price. Miller argues that there’s basically no business prospect in launching a “we charge more but we’re better!” airline, focused on value and quality over luxury or discount pricing (with added fees on top).
His recommendation is great, and I would love to see this for anything where fares and fees and add-ons are involved:
The USA DOT has moved in this direction with transparency rules requiring disclosure of baggage and change fees alongside fares. But that’s a half-measure; disclosure isn’t the same as bundling. Passengers still see the low base fare first and the fees in fine print. Full-price display would go further, and I think it’s worth trying. The downside is modest, and the upside could be significant: competition shifts toward schedule, reliability, and service quality rather than who can hide the most fees. None of this would be easy, and it doesn’t guarantee a better equilibrium. But understanding how we got here at least clarifies which interventions might work.
This is a nice business/economics/consumer issues read.
Related Reading: