[cmarschner]

Your reasoning follows the exact playbook that is repeated by architecture professionals around the world. It is exactly these kind of statements that lead me to comment in the first place.

No, architecture is not high art. It is the most public of arts and hence needs to serve the people. And people know very well which environments they like and which ones they don‘t. Where they find emotional well-being. That is not a political question at all. The studies are consistent.

We also don‘t need a theory. Architecture is a bunch of patterns and insights into human nature that has been known for thousands of years.