Buildings -the infrastructure of the city -the expectations and incentives of the people are three interrelated things and the change in one of them has always effected the other two elements in relation to it.
Buildings play a big role in shaping the infrastructure of a city and that directly effects the expectations and the incentives of the people living in that city and vice-versa, the expectations and incentives of the people are big inputs that bring upon a change in the requirements of a city and the shape of the city which modifies the infrastructure over time constantly and that change the type, style and the shape of spaces within the city i.e. the buildings. The buildings also are a reflection of the other elements and are a visual representation of the infrastructure of the city and the personality or in other terms the expectations and the incentives of people living in it.
The change in all these three elements is also guided by external exposure the transition in the cities around the globe which are linked with the city directly(when the city is dependent on another city for development and infrastructure) in this case the change in the other city would directly affect the city or indirectly(when the people living in the city get exposed to the environment of other cities which fascinates them and changes the expectations of the people) in this case the image of the city and infrastructure changes as there is a change in the incentives and expectations of the people living in the city which over the time changes this city on the whole and also the characteristic of the building, their shape and style and also the utility of the buildings.
Hence, these elements make the whole fabric of the city and none of them can be thought of eliminating the others from the picture, every now and then you see buildings being built defying these factors, but those building remain as sculptors rather than embedding into fabric of the city and lives of the people and those buildings are practically not as viable and useable as they should have been and those buildings always stand out rather than being a part of the city or the people living in the city. A building should be rationalised and thought after before designing, keeping in mind the purpose of the building, the surroundings and the role of people with the building. Such factors would help in binding the infrastructure of the city and the building in the real form becomes a part of the city in a very homogenous manner and that makes it sustainable in social terms.
This realization bring the answer to the second question as well the developers need to understand the infrastructure and the expectations of the people and their capacity to spend, rather than follow a trend set by some developer who had a lot of success by a kind of development, and just follow the same trend over and over again till the threshold of failure. Expectations and the capacity of the people living in a city keeps changing over time constantly and that changes the infrastructure needs of the city. The development to be economically feasible at the same time financially profitable has to done studying these factors, that development would be of advantage to the developer as well as in enhancing the city. This form of practice would help the cities follow an ideal progress and good development, and not just some sculptural building which standout and practically are of no use in the city’s fabric.
The developer also needs to keep in mind the capacity of the majority while developing an asset that would help him gain maximum profit as well as an optimum solution covering all the expectations and incentives of the people, such developments on a broader term would help cities and the people living in the city sustain themselves better financially and in their way of living. Such developments would eventually help achieve a stall to the over ambitiousness of the people in society and might help bring the vast gap between the rich to a stall at least.
The kind of developments being led by most of the developers till date are to lure people to have something more then what their pockets can afford which leads them to take heavy loans to have the opportunity to be a part of these fancy developments, but this system is making people financially very weak over time and distributing the wealth in the society very unevenly, which eventually brings upon a crash to the whole system and has been a big reason for the economic bubble bursts, and then eventually there have been a lot of phases over time where there has been a financial boom and then eventually an economic crash and then there are economic reforms to get everything back in shape to repeat the whole phenomenon again.
We are not try realizing the faults we have made previously and are not trying to realize what can be done to stop this cycle from repeating again and again, rather just following the same principles and developing, and then estimating