James
Kunstler
Without alleys, garages have moved to the front of the house in America. As a matter of design, the garage in front of the house is a disaster. The gigantic door presents a blank wall to the street. Tarted up with extra moldings or a checkerboard paint job, it can look even worse by drawing more attention to itself. Anyway, it is inescapably the dominant feature of the house’s front. And if it takes up a third of the façade, which is often the case, then it disfigures what remains, no matter how elegant. Moreover, when you consider that every house on the street has a similar gaping blank façade, you end up with a degraded street as well as a degraded architecture
The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. p. 129