The best part of this Amber Case piece on “design solutions to the monotony of non-places” is the observation on how different types of people suggest very different types of solutions.
Groups comprised entirely of software engineers immediately come up with lots of high tech ideas for changing non-spaces. These options are usually expensive, utopian, and difficult to maintain.
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By contrast, the best solutions presented in these workshops come from people who didn’t have a technical background at all.
We’ve somehow bred an entire generation of techbros who are compelled only to think in terms of massive disruption, whereas Case argues–I think common-sensically–that subtle or incremental shifts in a built environment can turn out to have outsized effects upon people.