Archinect - News

Syracuse School of Architecture, SUNY-ESF researchers receive $100,000 grant to study the racial wealth gap in the United States

2023-07-27T15:13:00-04:00

A trio of researchers from the Syracuse University School of Architecture and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) have been awarded a new $100,000 competitive grant for their examination of root causes laden in the built environment that are underpinning the growing racial wealth gap in the United States.

Syracuse’s Associate Dean for Research, Eliana Abu-Hamdi, Associate Professor Iman Fayyad, and SUNY-ESF landscape architecture assistant professor Daniel Cronan were recently awarded the grant for their project “Closing the Racial Wealth Gap through Environmental Justice and Participatory Design.”

The funding was made possible through the Lender Center for Social Justice. Researchers say it will help them achieve their project’s aim of identifying a list of positive changes that can be enacted in the most heavily-impacted communities. The research is being conducted in three phases and will result in BIM-supported participatory planning that demonstra...

New case of proposed "Poor Door" in Honolulu

2017-12-04T14:01:00-05:00

A real estate developer in Hawaii is under scrutiny for its plans to build a residential high-rise that has two separate entrances: one for high-income residents and another for low-income earners. [...] will include 78 affordable rental units for people earning 80 percent or less of the area median income, as required by Honolulu’s affordable housing strategy. The other 351 units will be market-priced condominiums. If things go as ProsPac plans, the units will be separated with two entrances.

Various examples of so-called "poor doors" in New York City, London, and Vancouver made the headlines in previous years, sparking heated debate across a number of Archinect comment sections.

The argument against zoning

2016-08-11T13:29:00-04:00

Zoning, although designed with the benign intention of keeping toxin-spewing industrial factories away from residential properties, has certainly been used for ill: ask any African-American family in the 20th century whose application to use their VA entitlement to buy a house was denied due to "redlining." Over at Bloomberg News, Justin Fox takes up the case that on the 100th anniversary of zoning laws in New York City, maybe it's time to substantially re-evaluate them.

As he writes, "Over the past few years, zoning has been blamed, mainly by economists bearing substantial empirical evidence, for an ever-growing litany of ills. The charge that zoning is used to keep poor people and minorities out of wealthy suburbs has been around for decades. But recent research has also blamed it for increasing income segregation, reducing economic mobility and depressing economic growth nationwide."

The latest in urban planning:

800 feet high and rising

2016-06-08T13:14:00-04:00

By living above 800 feet, Estis and Enkin are two members of an unexpectedly exclusive group in Manhattan. In my estimation, no more than 40 people currently live above that line, scattered among just three buildings... As my elevator descended and my ears popped, it occurred to me that I would almost certainly never take in such a view again. And in fact, maybe nobody will, if these apartments wind up becoming empty investments.

In this elegantly observed and exquisitely written piece, Jon Ronson not only takes in the view of Manhattan at 800+ feet with visits to Trump World Tower, One57, and 8 Spruce Street but looks toward the future of a nation divided by an increasingly intractable wealth gap.

Real estate of the priciest kind:

The self-segregation of America's wealthiest class

2016-05-12T13:16:00-04:00

For years now, people have been talking about the insulated world of the top 1 percent of Americans, but the top 20 percent of the income distribution is also steadily separating itself — by geography and by education as well as by income. This self-segregation of a privileged fifth of the population is changing the American social order and the American political system, creating a self-perpetuating class at the top, which is ever more difficult to break into.

"Geographic segregation dovetails with the growing economic spread between the top 20 percent and the bottom 80 percent: The top quintile is, in effect, disengaging from everyone with lower incomes."

In related news:

Activism targeting London's housing crisis bubbles to the surface

2015-03-27T13:38:00-04:00

Protestors against low-income housing demolition are not just fighting for their homes, but often for their ability to stay in London at all. The small amount of “affordable” housing being discussed as a replacement is really a figleaf.

New York's Megatowers: Nothing but 'Vertical Money'?

2015-03-19T12:45:00-04:00

Among this new breed of towers, design elements not directly tied to profit are often downgraded or eliminated as overall costs climb. [...] With today’s mathematically generated super-spires, it’s best to paraphrase Mae West: “Architecture has nothing to do with it.” [...] much as the new super-tall New York condos may serve that same general purpose, these are no works of art. If, as Goethe posited, architecture is frozen music, then these buildings are vertical money.

Related: Too Rich, Too Thin, Too Tall?

Here’s a Map of Where the World’s Richest People Live

2015-03-10T13:23:00-04:00

To put that number in perspective, these folks make up the upper 0.002 percent of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants and hold over $20 trillion of its money.

Ever wondered where the world’s richest live? Here's a map (and a list) of the top 20 nations hosting the globe's 173,000 folks that have more than $30 million in net assets.

'Poor doors': not the worst thing about social housing

2014-07-31T13:41:00-04:00

"Of course these so-called 'poor doors' are shocking, but they are a symptom, not the problem," says Michael Edwards, senior lecturer at the Bartlett school of planning at UCL. "We've simply stopped building proper social housing, and until that's addressed then fiddling around with front-door arrangements is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."

Previously: Tale of Two Cities: NYC approves ‘poor door’ for luxury high-rise

Tale of Two Cities: NYC approves ‘poor door’ for luxury high-rise

2014-07-22T14:08:00-04:00

New York City is moving forward with a proposal that calls for a new high-rise apartment complex to feature separate doors for wealthy tenants and those living in the building’s affordable housing unit. While wealthy residents will be able to enter the building from its designated front entrance, affordable housing tenants will be required to go in through a back alley. A mandatory affordable housing plan is not license to segregate lower-income tenants from those who are well-off.

Maybe the higher-ups will employ the low-income folk as maids and janitors? Built-in servants quarters, subsidized by the city.

Let them eat McMansions! The 1 percent, income inequality, and new-fashioned American excess

2014-04-16T13:35:00-04:00

Today we call those changes “inequality,” and inequality is, obviously, the point of the McMansion. The suburban ideal of the 1950s, according to “The Organization Man,” was supposed to be “classlessness,” but the opposite ideal is the brick-to-the-head message of the dominant suburban form of today.

How zoning affects the wealth gap

2013-05-08T12:40:00-04:00

A "snob zone" is a place that uses restrictive zoning in a residential area to keep certain types of housing -- and therefore people -- out, says Lisa Prevost. Prevost’s book, Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate, comes out today and focuses on several towns in the Northeast [...]. For instance, one zoning law considered by the town would require people to have a minimum lot size of four acres in the town.