From the Home chapter:

To understand why our modern residential landscape leaves so many of us with a vacant feeling, it's useful to see our houses and neighborhoods in the way I've come to think of as sacramental. What ideals do they convey in their physical reality? How do these habitats make those who live in them feel? What kind of life is possible here?
What does living in such places teach residents? Howe does it shape their character and outlook?

These aren't silly questions, or the kinds of things that only the well-off can afford to think about. Your typical conservative will scoff at them defensively, but he can only dismiss these questions if he is determined to ignore human nature, and the way the built environment both expresses humanity's deepest longings and aspirations, and the way it shapes them.

Thought experiment: You are standing at mass in the great Gothic cathedral at Chartres, beneath the vast symphonic complexity of the building's soaring arches; now you are at the same ceremony inside an equally vast modern American suburban megachurch, which looks like an expensively built gymnasium or theater. Theologically, the ceremony has precisely the same meaning. But in which place do you feel closer to God, more aware of the holiness of existence? From which of these churches are you more likely to emerge with a glow of exaltation? If a terrorist with a truck bomb forced you to choose which of these structures ou'd rather see destroyed, would it make a difference to you? Why?

Granted, this is an extreme example, but the same principle applies to our houses. The way they look, and the way we build them, matters. We have been trained to think that beauty is a luxury; consequently, most Americans now live in places that they find hard to love, and that make ordinary human community difficult.