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.
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So far, so good. But the path forward is less clear. Klein acknowledged the difficulty of arriving at the meaning of “beauty.” Part of the solution is simply to open debate on the question. For proponents of beauty, this is a strategic advance, as the debate implies the possibility of an answer. In my view, this also explains the reluctance to have the debate in the first place: some fear that arriving at a consensus about what is beautiful undermines the liberal commitment to a values-neutral politics.
But as Klein points out, two architects of modern liberalism—FDR and Lyndon Johnson—held a distinct view of what is beautiful and built accordingly. We might think of Timberline Lodge in Oregon, built by the Works Progress Administration and dedicated by Roosevelt in 1937. Johnson, in his 1967 speech to Congress on conservation, said, “We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities.”
We don't need to arrive at a metaphysical consensus over the definition of beauty to reestablish its place in our public life. Just as we muddle through debates over, say, religious freedom without arriving at the ultimate meaning of religion, so, too, can we engage politically about the beautiful.
Moreover, we can make beauty a public-policy consideration entirely on liberal grounds. In fact, the way to do so has already been shown. Disagreement over beauty looked different in Immanuel Kant’s day than it does in ours, but the tectonic plates of the debate have shifted only slightly. Kant urged the pragmatic approach: we may not be able to perceive beauty qua beauty, but we can recognize that most human beings find similar objects beautiful.
A growing body of evidence points to such a consensus. A recent study by David Broockman, Christopher Elmendorf, and Joshua Kalla found that aesthetic judgments are central to people’s support for or opposition to housing construction. Examples of more attractive housing significantly increased support for development, even when construction was far from respondents’ own neighborhoods. The study concludes that beauty and perceived visual fit are causal determinants of whether voters will back pro-housing policies, not merely post hoc rationalizations for resistance.
In addition, many surveys of peoples’ architectural preferences, from the United States to the Netherlands to the Asia-Pacific region, consistently show wide majority support for buildings typically described as beautiful.
Philosophers will continue to debate the true meaning of beauty. What is it? Does it have an objective quality, or is it entirely subjective? Meantime, all of us, philosophers included, must live somewhere. The widespread agreement on beautiful architecture causes no obvious harm to anyone—quite the opposite—so we can even rest assured that John Stuart Mill’s harm principle will go unviolated. In other words, we can begin to build beautifully again entirely within the bounds of center-left propriety. Constructing a physical environment that pleases the senses is not right-wing.
To improve on a recent phrase: let’s build back beautiful.