there's a great example of this from the early 20th century. victorian builders in SF had to compete on build quality, amenities and architecture because it was so easy to build new homes. (there's a good book on the same process in NYC called "the decorated tenement," h/t @stephenjacobsmith.com)
The Decorated Tenement: How Immigrant Builders and Architects Transformed the Slum in the Gilded Age | JSTOR
A reexamination of working-class architecture in late nineteenth-century urban America As the multifamily building type that often symbolized urban squalor,…
jstor.org
David Pollack@davidmpollack.bsky.social · 2d agoIf you reduce the barriers to entry for building, more local, small developers would invest in architecture for personal, subjective reasons and there would be fewer mediocre hot takes on design. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...
![Here, Van Leeuwen did introduce substantial anecdotal
evidence indicating actual confusion. For instance, Rebel
itself received a report from a confused consumer in August
2024. She wrote that her husband purchased Rebel “by accident
when I sent him to the store for Van Leeuwen,” because “your
product was placed right next to Van Leeuwen and looked the same
. . . . I nearly did the same thing when I shopped! Later, my
friend shared the same experience on the other side of the
country!” JX33. This single incident, anecdotal though it may
be, remains meaningfully probative: such reports are expected to
be rare when the products at issue are inexpensive and
consumers’ incentive to complain about confusion is therefore
diminished. Coty, 277 F. Supp. 3d at 453 (“[C]ommon sense](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:64ruyhhfjvjkoix3uoe7uhfi/bafkreibaabka2pb7dhxqi7po3hf22joif6vpoavehjpahc5neb3x26qvei)
