I think that 90% of the courses I play don't mow their fairways short enough and water those fairways too much. And I think that of those courses, 90% would immediately become better tests and more fun and interesting courses/designs if this wasn't the case. Even with modest courses of modest architectural goals, short, dry fairways will enhance the design -- in fact, I'd say they will actually create the design (since a ball that keeps running off line is going to run into places that bring new angles and new shot requirements into play, every day.) I guess all of that is obvious. Maybe also obvious - though I just thought about it -- is the fact that active architecture (and by that I mean nothing negative, i.e. I don't mean over-active architecture or busy architecture) has come to the forefront in North America because of the schism between designers and maintenance people; because of the simple fact that designers long ago learned that they would not be in charge of the day-to-day maintenance, and thus that they could not design a course that factored in the ideal (or their ideal) maintenance regime. So what they did was to design active courses, courses that manifested all sorts and manner of interesting shot demands and all sorts of fun choices and all kinds of architectural principles -- and this because they needed to ensure that the course would appear to be (and hopefully still in fact be) a quality design, and that it would suggest to golfers the need to play various clubs and kinds of shots throughout the round even if that need was actually quite muted because of the (eventual and day-in-day-out) maintenance conditions. And conversely, what went out the window was simple design (and here I don't mean anything overly positive, i.e. I don't mean brilliantly subtle, or understatedly minimal), the kind of design that was architecturally sound but didn't look it, the kind of design that used a lot of doglegs and had a lot of run up greens open from one side or the other, the kind that architects built before it became crystal clear that their wishes for how the course should be maintained would never be granted. In short, I think that for better or worse, it has become virtually certain that the kind of average English courses that Sean Arble profilles here will never be built in North America, not because architects here are dumb and talentless but on the contrary, because they are smart and very talented, i.e. because they are smart enough to know that no matter what any owner tells them, the course won't be maintained the way architects want it, and talented enough to turn this negative into a positive by designing active courses.
Peter