Archinect - News

As the UK and US shift rightwards, architects react

2017-01-17T12:38:00-05:00

The last year has seen a dramatic political shift to the right in the Western world (and elsewhere), marked in particular by Brexit and the election of Donald J. Trump. Alongside the former, the Tories secured a firm grip on the UK, with Prime Minister Theresa May stepping in to fill the void left after David Cameron’s departure. In the United States, the Republican party has an equally secure hold over the country and its future, controlling all three branches of government.

With this turn to the right, the built environment will undoubtedly change significantly. Cuts to government-subsidized housing are expected in both countries. Meanwhile, much-need infrastructural updates may—or may not—be on the horizon in the U.S., as they were one of the primary campaign promises of the President-elect.

Therefore, it’s not really a surprise that architects on both sides of the Atlantic have voiced opinions on the direction their countries are heading. Two architectural organizations have just ...

Don’t want Ben Carson to become Secretary of HUD? Sign this letter

2017-01-09T14:32:00-05:00

A growing list of urban planners, designers, architects, and scholars are putting their weight behind a petition intended to prevent Dr. Ben Carson from becoming the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He has no prior experience with housing and holds widely-unpopular positions on public housing and other issues. For instance, Carson has described the Fair Housing Act as “socialist”, suggesting he would not enforce it.

Here's how the letter, which is still being edited and written collaboratively, begins:

We, the undersigned, are strongly opposed to the appointment of Dr. Ben Carson as the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Apart from his personal views on a variety of political and social issues, we consider Dr. Carson completely unqualified to anticipate or promote appropriate solutions to the pressing housing and urban needs facing our country.

Created in 1965 to further the nation’s housing and urban...

Trump's properties have suddenly become potential targets for terrorism

2017-01-03T13:56:00-05:00

Even before Donald Trump became president-elect, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for his name to be scrubbed from Istanbul’s Trump Towers. Erdogan pinned his plea to Trump’s Islamophobia, saying that the candidate “has no tolerance for Muslims in America.” Now that Trump is weeks from assuming the presidency, cities that host his many branded properties have an additional concern to consider: the potential terrorism threat brought by his name.

With Trump's Presidency dawning, the final Jane Jacobs work "Dark Age Ahead" wins new relevancy

2016-12-27T18:12:00-05:00

At a time when pundits and political scientists were celebrating the end of history, pointing to an emerging Democratic majority and extolling the virtues of a flat world of globalization, she ominously predicted a coming age of urban crisis, mass amnesia, and populist backlash in her final work, Dark Age Ahead. Eerily prescient as always, rereading the 2005 book today serves as a survivors’ guide to the Age of Trump.

"Jacobs outlines an increasing distrust of politicians and politics, a burgeoning new urban crisis in cities, worsening environmental degradation, entrenched segregation, and an “enlarging gulf between rich and poor along with attrition of the middle class” as signals and symptoms of a coming Dark Age."

Before Trump has even taken office, his infrastructure plan faces an uncertain future

2016-12-21T12:05:00-05:00

It's not at all clear that President-elect Donald Trump's plans to spend massively on infrastructure are going to unfold as he promised. Trump made rebuilding the nation's aging roads, bridges and airports very much part of his job-creation strategy in the presidential race. But lately lobbyists have begun to fear that there won't be an infrastructure proposal at all, or at least not the grand plan they'd been led to expect.

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry nominated as Secretary of U.S. Department of Energy

2016-12-15T12:29:00-05:00

President-elect Donald Trump has added another name to his cabinet: former Texas Governor Rick Perry will head the U.S. Department of Energy. The announcement has drawn mixed responses. The oil and gas industry, on the one hand, welcomed the fossil fuel industry-friendly climate change skeptic, and immediately requested that he support increases in natural gas exports. On the other hand, environmentalists and others concerned with accelerating global warming found the choice worrisome, to say the least. A few years ago, Perry proposed abolishing the department altogether, although he also forgot its name once during a debate in a notorious gaffe.

The nomination is the latest addition of an oil industry-friendly climate change skeptic to the cabinet, following the selection of Exxon Mobil Corp’s CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a major opponent of climate change mitigation efforts, as head of the EPA.

Besides managing energy-related re...

Cities should be very wary of Trump's 'Plan for Urban Renewal'

2016-12-09T13:35:00-05:00

Among scholars and many city dwellers, urban renewal is remembered for its vast destruction of minority communities, when entire neighborhoods were razed for housing, highways and civic projects. [...] Is Mr. Trump knowingly or accidentally embracing historical conflict? The answer depends, in part, on how much we think Mr. Trump, a real estate developer and son of a real estate developer, knows about the history of the conflict over the shape of the American city.

Related on Archinect:

Trump pilfers Clinton's plan for an 'infrastructure bank'

2016-11-21T13:51:00-05:00

A key member of Donald Trump’s transition team said the incoming administration is exploring ways to fund fixing bridges and roads including by establishing an “infrastructure bank,” a concept Hillary Clinton promoted and the Republican’s campaign had previously derided. [...] Trump’s campaign had criticized Clinton’s proposed infrastructure bank as being “controlled by politicians and bureaucrats in Washington” and funded by a “$275 billion tax increase on American businesses.”

Find out more about Trump and Clinton's plans to remedy America's crumbling infrastructure here.

Why is Trump seeking private equity for public infrastructure?

2016-11-21T12:51:00-05:00

The indefatigable Paul Krugman takes a closer look at Trump's proposed infrastructure funding plans in his column for The New York Times, wondering why the President-elect would seek private equity for public projects. Is this a profiteering scheme that sneakily privatizes ownership of traditionally publicly accessible resources (like water, for example)?

As Krugman notes about Trump's plan: "Crucially, it’s not a plan to borrow $1 trillion and spend it on much-needed projects — which would be the straightforward, obvious thing to do. It is, instead, supposed to involve having private investors do the work both of raising money and building the projects — with the aid of a huge tax credit that gives them back 82% of the equity they put in. To compensate for the small sliver of additional equity and the interest on their borrowing, the private investors then have to somehow make profits on the assets they end up owning."

For more on how architects are reacting to the Presidential elect...

Compared to AIA letters issued during Obama's election, CEO Robert Ivy's statement on Trump is far from "business as usual"

2016-11-18T19:47:00-05:00

Welp, that was fast. On yesterday's episode of Archinect Sessions ("#89: AIAWOL"), while discussing the recent fallout over the AIA's statement pledging support of President-elect Trump, Paul sent out an open call to listeners: send us any other statements made by the AIA in response to a prior presidential election. Within hours of posting the episode, the AIA responded with two statements: one from President Obama's election in 2008 (dated 11/24/2008), and one from his reelection in 2012 (dated 11/7/2012).

While all three statements appear, on their face, as form-letters expressing that the AIA will work with the President-elect insofar as their usual role demands, the 2008/2012 statements differ in a few key ways from the one AIA CEO Robert Ivy made in the wake of this year's election, provoking outrage among members.

For one, neither the 2008 nor 2012 statements are signed by any one person—they quote from the concurrent AIA President or CEO, but are not issued as if directly from...

Trump says climate change is a "hoax", yet moves to protect his properties from sea level rise

2016-11-17T13:21:00-05:00

Long before he set his sights on Mexico, Donald Trump had his eyes on a different wall. He wanted to build one on the Irish coast of County Clare – a 13ft high structure erected to protect his luxury golf resort, the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel, from increasingly volatile storms and rising sea levels.

While the president-elect announced a climate-change skeptic as the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency transition team, this move to protect his investment suggests Trump recognizes the effects of a changing climate.