Crappy Architecture

http://artsblog.dallasnews.com/2015/05/why-is-so-much-architecture-junk.html/

Mark Lamster makes some excellent points but just misses the single issue that does drive the creation of crappy architecture. For private development, a project’s economic viability is determined by how much investment capital (or at what terms) the pro-forma attracts. From what I understand, the quality of design will be referenced in a very abstract manner, if at all. The community, social and environmental impacts that determine a project’s success over time and in the eyes of the public are not explicitly valued. This begets the race to the bottom of code and zoning compliance that we see every day. So long as that remains the case, you can expect crappy architecture to continue to flourish.

Comments

Urban Play

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Bloomberg Surveillance

I was watching a little Bloomberg this morning. An interesting moment occurred when Tom Keene was discussing the talks going on in Paris. I wish I had the exact phrasing, but he said something like, “We really need to wait until we see the impacts [of climate change] before we can try to prevent them.” His tone sort of trailed off at the end as if the contradiction of that statement occurred to him mid-sentence. His point was, I believe, that it would be irresponsible to spend big money trying to prevent something that might not happen. They then moved on to the massive smog alert going on in Beijing and how the health impacts of burning coal have brought the Chinese government to the table sooner than anyone had imagined possible. Unfortunately, he and his fellow commentators failed to put these two ideas together: If we wait until we see the impacts, it will be too late to avoid them. When inaction risks many lives, the only prudent thing to do is act now.* ...

The Value of Pop Economics?

A friend recently posted a meme about rising income inequality to Facebook. One of the comments was a link to a piece from Economics Explained with the provocative title " How The Dutch Economy Shows We Can't Reduce Wealth Inequality With Taxes " I'm starting to see a pattern in these sorts of economics articles: 1. Make a pointed and contrarian claim about the power of economics to address a major issue in contemporary society (taxes won't fix inequality). 2. Compare related economics concepts that have much narrower definitions than the ones that drew in the reader (GINI vs income & wealth inequality vs a few specific aspects of Dutch taxes and culture). 3. Add some artfully selected facts to keep people interested (Heineken family info). 4. Also artfully avoid saying explicitly that the narrow comparison proves or disproves anything specific about the broader societal problem. 5. Make a generally agreeable statement about the world: Inequality doesn't ...

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