Mexican Buildings

I´ve already commented on lots of the little farm dwellings in the countryside that are made of adobe brick and from the outside look like they are slowly dissolving. Well, nothing really wrong with that - everything that isn´t being actively maintained goes back to nature:)  Heck, whole civilizations dissolve and continents fall to pieces too - for that matter, stars explode and we have every reason to believe that the universe its self will eventually disappear as well!

Wandering around Oaxaca, I see lots of old buildings that are falling to pieces and you can see layers of old adobe and baked clay bricks that are exposed as the stucco comes off. Much of it is kind of attractive, and much of it is ugly too.
I have to say though that after plastic packaging (the most pervasive and offensive eye-sore in all developing countries in my opinion) the next most problematic substance that industrialization has given to the world is... cement!
Yes, with mass-produced cement comes huge quantities of concrete and it is far stronger and lasts far longer than adobe. In the past, the scale of structures was limited by the materials used. Cement was available to the Romans, but when the fine powder was made by hand (pre industrialization) it was used only on well planned projects rather than on every little structure that Tom Dick and Harry feel like throwing together. Here in central America the pre-Hispanic civilizations also worked with stone and mortar on a massive scale but again these large long term structures were well planned and took a great deal of coordinated effort to produce.
In the present however, all the modern houses and buildings that are built by individuals or small organizations that are driven by cost (almost slipped up there and used economy) from cities to tiny villages are, in my opinion, hideous creations! They are ugly boxes with steel reinforcing sticking out of every corner and walls and floors that will collapse given the slightest earth quake (ask an engineer!)
Buildings are never finished here (I was told that when a building gets finished that the government expects taxes to be paid, but not if it is a work "in progress"), they are always getting a new floor or room added. Often they seem to be just plain old abandoned, mid-project. The multitude of engineering sins perpetrated in their construction are usually just stuccoed over when someone wants to move into a more or less completed section. And because all these buildings are made of concrete, they last for many generations of people rather than the one or two that they would have lasted if made from wood and adobe.
This "architectural litter" is absolutely everywhere, but of course it does not bother the locals... They cant even see it. They are busy just trying to make a buck for them selves or even just to feed and house their families.

It is only offensive to my privileged first world eyes...

p.s. By the way, cement production and curing is a significant producer  of CO2...green-house gasses!