Features of Design

Russian medieval architecture is characterized by __. Building materials were often wooden, which is cheaper than 

Russian Revival architecture from the late 19th century is considered "revival" because of its prominently medieval stylistic influences. 

Why are these stylistic details of urban architecture important to the city?

Cities are geographically small enough for someone to gaze over its entirety from a high vantage point, as Napoleon purportedly did from the Sparrow Hills. But they are also dense and complex enough for someone to roam its nooks and crannies for days, weeks, years. (Perhaps I will liken a city to a pomegranate: I can easily look at the whole pomegranate from afar and quickly have a sense of its aesthetic quality, but I could also commit myself to studying the complex arrangement of its countless seeds on the interior).

The aesthetic qualities of architectural design thus define the city's image from both an expansive outside view and from the interior view. From far away, the the city's most prominent structures constitute the city's skyline. Here, prominence can refer to either the size or quantity of the structure, whether they be a large church or an expansive slum, or "forty by forty churches" as is famously the case in Moscow. 

But from up close, the exteriors and interiors of 

The immediate and obvious reason is architecture's immediate and obvious impact: aesthetic appeal.