Hipodromo in Mexico City is one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the world.
Architecturally, it's a bunch of hideously ugly buildings. But there's trees and plants everywhere, and they're beautiful, and that's all you see.
The reason everything is ugly is because we don't have trees and nature anymore - we just have roads and parking instead.
There's tons of beautiful tree-lined streets in Chicago with ridiculously ugly houses. You don't notice the mismatched, horrible architecture. You just notice the trees & the birds & the squirrels.
You don't have to be classical Paris to be beautiful. You just need plants and a neighborhood designed for people to live in - not cars to park in.
I'd agree that that is the most important part, the city must be a ballroom, and that architecture proper comes second. Thing is, we lost both though. No more beautiful architecture, but also a complete misunderstanding of how to build a harmonious public realm. We can only think cars. Parking lot for cars. Streets for cars. Buffer zones for the exhaust, noise, and danger of cars. It destroys all cohesion.
I've spent a bunch of time on the 1940s.nyc site and the most striking difference between 1940s NYC and 2022 NYC is the lack of trees in 1940.
My personal favorite is the Russian Academy of Science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Academy_of_Sciences
Once Alvaro Siza (Pritzker prize) was asked if his architecture was minimalist. He answered (paraphrasing): "No, it's just a minimalism of costs".
From wikipedia[1]:
"During World War I, Le Corbusier taught at his old school in La-Chaux-de-Fonds. He concentrated on theoretical architectural studies using modern techniques. In December 1914, along with the engineer Max Dubois, he began a serious study of the use of reinforced concrete as a building material. He had first discovered concrete working in the office of Auguste Perret, the pioneer of reinforced concrete architecture in Paris, but now wanted to use it in new ways."
"Le Corbusier saw the new society founded in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution as a promising laboratory for his architectural ideas. He met the Russian architect Konstantin Melnikov during the 1925 Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris, and admired the construction of Melnikov's constructivist USSR pavilion, the only truly modernist building in the Exposition other than his own Esprit Nouveau pavilion. At Melnikov's invitation, he travelled to Moscow, where he found that his writings had been published in Russian; he gave lectures and interviews and between 1928 and 1932 he constructed an office building for the Tsentrosoyuz, the headquarters of Soviet trade unions."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier