Today's architecture is, for the most part, meaningless, shallow, and impersonal. Just look at houses built in the last few decades. In Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher asks, "Why is that?" He says,

"For one, there are no front porches on those houses, and therefore nothing to encourage neighbors to open themselves to street life. Those houses turn their backs to their neighbors. For another, the utilitarian sameness in row after row speaks a pattern language of monotony. There are no parks, no playgrounds, no common areas. These stolid brick houses don't aspire to be more than shelter. There is no ornamentation, none of the human touches that endear us to older, traditional architecture, no matter what the style. To drive down our old street, or almost any residential street built in Dallas after the Second World War, is to encounter a monosyllabic pattern language that says the same word, over and over: efficiency.

"To understand why our modern residential landscape leaves so many of us with a vacant feeling, it's useful to see our houses and neighborhoods in the way I've come to think of as sacramental. What ideals do they convey in their physical reality? How do these habitats make those who live in them feel? What kind of life is possible here? What does living in such places teach its residents? How does it shape their character and outlook?

"These aren't silly questions, or the kinds of things that only the well-off can afford to think about. Your typical conservative will scoff at them defensively, but he can only dismiss these questions if he is determined to ignore human nature, and the way the built environment both expresses humanity's deepest longings and aspirations, and the way it shapes them."