Great diary!  I grew up in Los Angeles where everything is constantly being torn down and replaced with parking lots and strip-malls, so I do have that lingering aversion to concrete.  Also, to grey, square buildings.  I never did understand why people built them.  

But then I read Wolfe's book, called (iirc) From Bauhaus to Our House, and it gave me a little bit of an understanding about the thinking behind it.  I feel sort of the same now with your diary -- I won't look at concrete quite the same.  Especially now that I know it was Rome's lost mortar!

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes