As the giant square apartment projects rise from the downtown landscape like monuments to monotony, one can only wonder what Santa Cruz will look like once it hits the state’s housing mandate for units per square inch of land. Virtually every new building downtown in the past few years looks more or less like all the others, with their “articulated setbacks,” their little balconies, their arbitrary-looking checkered color schemes.

About a year ago I went apartment hunting in a couple of those buildings and found the one-bedroom units I looked at to be cleanly untouched and well-appointed enough to have potential, once lived in for a few years. The hallways were rather sterile and vaguely hospital-like, but who knows, maybe with time they too can be broken in enough to feel like home to the residents, whoever they may be. Rents of the places I looked at were then in the $2,000 to $3,000 range, about twice as much as the monthly assessment of my one-bedroom bay view condo walking distance from downtown. Needless to say, I’m not moving.

The other day I was speaking with my colleague Mark Primack, an architect, about architecture, local and in general. Mark noted that every generation generates its own conformist style based largely on the cost of labor and materials and in revolt against the previous generation’s style. Thus, locally, Victorians are supplanted by bungalows, those wooden Craftsman or Spanish stucco bungalows by modern ranch houses, ranch houses by generic suburban tract homes and so on. But he told me he designs homes from the inside out, based on how people will live in them, and that what you see from the street follows from that.

I understand this principle completely, in these post-divorce golden years when I have organized my own living space without regard to anyone else’s taste, so that the design of each room in my apartment — living-bedroom, office, kitchen, bath — has its own character and its own esthetic, and wherever I am at home at whatever time of day I am surrounded by beauty. It gives a sense of order and of calm as well as pleasure, and I’m sure that helps explain why I haven’t gone mad amid the rampant crises and calamities of the outside world.

Mark also told me how much he dislikes the term “units” to describe what are meant to be people’s homes. We do not live in units but in spaces we create, and any such space, even the humblest shack or tent, can be a work of art. So that those boring-looking, can’t-tell-them-apart, could-be-anywhere buildings will be as interesting on the inside as the people who live there, and who live not only in their apartments but use the surrounding, pedestrian-friendly streets as their larger living environment, the shops and bars and restaurants their common areas where the public hangs out, interacts and creates a social dynamic and a cultural habitat.

That, for me, has always been the joy of cities: the life of the streets and public spaces, the creative culture of clubs and cafés and galleries, the intriguing human dramas in the theater of everyday life. And that’s why I’m not that concerned about the transformation of charming old downtown Santa Cruz into a densely populated, more vertical urban core instead of a cute little town that got lost in the last century.

If there’s a lively mixture of low-income, “affordable” (whatever that means), medium-middle, market-rate and high-end domiciles crowded together in a few square blocks, and few cars (because there’s no place to park), and the residents are here for the concerts and coffee and art shows and buskers as well as the basketball games — interesting individuals living well-rounded lives — who knows, if there are enough open public spaces, and if we can weather the climate surprises, and if the Rapture can be postponed long enough for us to enjoy these aging days, there may be time, if we have the will, to create a last-ditch renaissance.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.