Trees, hedgerows and small plots of wild growth even in cities now serve as effective barriers. Trees in cities effectively reduce the temperature, which in turn reduces demand for air conditioning. All new apartment buildings have garden spaces for the residents, instead of expanses of mowed grass, and mowed grass is becoming a rare sight. Likewise, architects strive to reduce the amount of sunlight which rooftops and parking areas reflect back into the air, which intensify the city's heat. Cities beautify their urban vistas by dismantling billboards and other visual blights.
Cities put controls on the size and intensity of all commercial signs.
Bergonian architects and psychologists have become very sensitive to the idea of a harmonized field of vision, with little clutter. The capitalist builder aims to not harmonize with the whole, to dis- harmonize, so that there is no harmony but only visual cacophony. Thus, every tall building in an urban skyline is designed to be unique, to cry out for attention, as do the various neon signs that proliferate in suburban sprawl, or the individual products in the supermarket isle. Since Bergonian psychology holds that sensory input can directly influence affect, it follows that beauty has a salutary effect on mental health, by promoting attentiveness and focus while ugliness keeps thought randomized and confused by atomizing attention. Bergonian socialists and environmentalists believe that capitalist marketers deliberately intend this effect, and want a nation of confused slaves to herd through impulse control.