No Time for Ugliness

How quaint, no graffiti on the projects and children could play outside at midday without getting shot in a drive by. More innocent times indeed.

I'd be happy to see signs like the one at the gas station at 5:10 in part 1.

I respect architecture and its goals, as expressed in this film set, but the first half reminded me of nothing so much as Adolf Hitler's "New Berlin", as conceptualized and rendered, at least in miniature, by his architect, Albert Speer. The concept was to build an entire new city on top of an existing one filled with the living, even moving the existing railroad stations. It was all to be centered around the grand "Hitlerplatz", of course, consisting of dozens of new and grandiose government buildings. The enormous central building, the Reichschancellory, was as far as they actually got built, before the war took its toll on the workforce and funds available, and before Berlin became target #1 for Allied bombs. But it was a site to behold. For a good idea of what this was, watch the movie, 'Inside the Third Reich', with Rutger Hauer, as a very tall Professor Speer. As is made very clear in the film, the entire concept was utter madness. The rest of this documentary was enjoyable, but I am still left with a sense of futility.