Reconsidering beauty and its economic relevance in modern cities

By Lorenzo Bona

We live in a period in which the places we live and work appear increasingly shaped by functional priorities. Technological progress has enabled high levels of optimization – aspects like  efficiency (e.g. in energy use) and performance (e.g. durability of materials) can now be delivered with high levels of precision. This, of course, has brought widely shared and significant benefits. Yet, in emphasizing what is measurable, less quantifiable qualities such as beauty risk being treated as marginal, if not overlooked altogether.

Economic Implications and Mobility

From an economic perspective, this may invite reflection on a broader question, potentially extending beyond matters of taste to include aspects of human capital and labor mobility. If individuals respond to both function and experience, environments that fail to engage on both levels may struggle to sustain long-term attachment. Over time, this may translate into weaker desirability and reduced resilience in urban environments. Individuals, after all, can “vote with their feet,” gravitating toward places that better satisfy both functional and experiential preferences. The enduring pull of cities like Paris or Rome suggests that such factors may matter.

A Hypothetical Signal

As a hypothetical, beauty – though subjective – may still act as an economic signal: imperfect, yet consequential. Of course, what beauty is remains something of a million-dollar question. So who defines it stays open; but, at the same time, whether our socio-economic frameworks are fully prepared to register its relevance seems equally unclear.

Considering all this, new forms of entrepreneurial activity may once again be highly relevant. One might even speculate whether future value creation could benefit not only from ongoing debates and further research within architecture, but also from increasingly coordinated, cross-disciplinary efforts among architects, builders, and economic development professionals.

In that sense, the challenge perhaps may be less about inventing new principles than about aligning existing expertise around the long-term value of aesthetic and experiential quality.