Endowed with a power that is as unreliable as it is often inexpressible, architecture will always compete poorly with utilitarian demands for humanity’s resources. How hard it is to make a case for the cost of tearing down and rebuilding a mean but serviceable street. How awkward to have to defend, in the face of more tangible needs, the benefits of realigning a crooked lamppost or replacing an ill-matched window frame. Beautiful architecture has none of the unambiguous advantages of a vaccine or a bowl of rice. Its construction will hence never be raised to a dominant political priority, for even if the whole man-made world could, through relentless effort and sacrifice, be modelled to rival St. Mark’s Square, even if we could spend the rest of our lives in the Villa Rotonda or the Glass House, we would still often be in a bad mood.

—The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton