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What are the likely policy goals of a neurosurgeon appointed secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by a man who can't stop disappointedly tweeting at Alec Baldwin? "There’s not a dearth of qualified Republicans for that job, so if you choose somebody with no background in... View full entry
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has offered the post of secretary of housing and urban development to former presidential candidate Ben Carson, who will consider it over the Thanksgiving holiday, a Carson spokesman said on Tuesday.
"The president-elected asked him to consider it and he's considering it," Carson spokesman Armstrong Williams said. Carson, a retired surgeon, dropped out of the 2016 presidential race in March and backed Trump.
— Reuters
More on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development: Turning down tenants because of criminal records may be discrimination, says HUDRebuild by Design Wins Innovation AwardU.S. Department of HUD announces the Rebuild By Design winners View full entry
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... View full entry
LIke everything else in the 21st century, infrastructure is no longer about big moves but rather about nuance, refinement, and creative strategy. This is the argument advocated by The Hill, which makes the case that all infrastructure projects should be resilient and made to serve multiple... View full entry
After being criticized for helping to displace renters by inadvertently motivating landlords to turn long-term rentals into short-term hotel-like quarters, Airbnb is getting political and donating $100,000 to Los Angeles' Proposition HHH, which would require city officials to raise tax dollars to... View full entry
In reality, the central neighborhoods of many major American cities are thriving. [...]
“Inner city,” in short, is imprecise in describing today’s urban reality. It captures neither the true geography of poverty or black America, nor the quality of life in many communities in central cities. But politically, its 1970s-era meaning lingers. [...]
But in any context, it is hard to shake the phrase’s association with an era when American cities looked very different from the way they do today.
— nytimes.com
Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, in recent debates with Hillary Clinton, had referred to the "inner cities" as “a disaster education-wise, job-wise, safety-wise, in every way possible,” and as places that if "You walk down the street, you get shot."In fact-checking response... View full entry
Despite introducing what seemed like excellent legislation to help increase the number of affordable housing units in developer-backed housing projects, California governor Jerry Brown's proposal caused so much multi-faceted angst it became political poison, primarily because it gently... View full entry
Amid everything that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to recklessly spew, one of the milestones in his circus of a campaign is his apparent plans to build the U.S./Mexico border wall...
Competition creator Reality Cues turns the tables in their newest installment: Good Walls Make Good Neighbors, Mr. Trump.
The objective is pretty straightforward: Design a wall that separates Mr. Trump from the rest of the U.S.
— Bustler
“We want to ask questions more than produce answers,” Reality Cues emphasizes in the brief. Curious? Learn more about their latest snarky competition on Bustler.More on Archinect:Donald Trump, usher of America's postindustrial urban blightDonald Trump is architecture's nightmare... View full entry
Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's daughter introduced him as a man who has overseen the construction of skyscrapers, thereby qualifying him to somehow take stead of the vastly more complex civic architecture of the United States. Never mind that Donald Trump... View full entry
I think it was a wonderful moment in American history. I thought what Michelle Obama was attempting to do was to draw that link to show that it isn't just what's going on in the White House now and isn't it great that there's a black family there, but there's a much longer history that needs to be appreciated...
[It was] just grueling, grueling kind of work. And nobody was really willing ... to do it. So slave labor played a massive role in getting this city built.
— Clarence Lusane
During her speech at the DNC on Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama alluded to the White House's history of slave labor during the 1790s. NPR interviews Clarence Lusane, chairperson of Howard University's political science department and author of “The Black History of the White House”, who... View full entry
“Trump ... believes in using expensive materials that convey prestige and wealth, and people buy into that,” said Jerold Kayden, professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University. He said in some ways the legacy of Trump buildings is a matter of taste. “To some they are the height of ambition and the height of prestige and to others they are gaudy, but he has certainly pioneered with some others architecture as brand.” — marketplace.org
"Other New Yorkers view Trump’s investment in luxury buildings in undervalued locations in the '90s as a contribution to New York’s renewal. To them, his construction represented investment at a time when New York was struggling with blight."Related stories in the Archinect news:The Problem... View full entry
Adorned with gold and marble, [the Trump Tower] looks like Saddam Hussein went on a shopping spree with Liberace.
To make way for its construction, Mr Trump demolished the handsome Art Deco Bonwit Teller department store. He promised to donate its bas-relief carvings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but it turned out they were too expensive to remove so they were smashed to pieces on site instead.
— Financial Times
Loud, pushy, indifferent to anything but self-touted glamour: Donald Trump's politics and his buildings share a great deal in common. In this piece, The Financial Times' reigning design critic Edwin Heathcote briefly touches on the repugnant qualities that the Donald's politics and his buildings... View full entry
Many and baroque have been the scandals that have toppled Illinois politicians. Rod Blagojevich, the most recent governor to be sent to prison, is behind bars for trying to sell the remaining years of Barack Obama’s Senate term. But Aaron Schock, who announced his resignation on March 17th as Republican congressman for the state’s 18th district, is the first to be felled by an over-talkative interior designer. — the Economist
'Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois's 18th Congressional district is probably better known for showing off his abs on the cover of Men's Health (see below) than for any actual legislating. At 33, Schock holds the title of the third-youngest US representative, at least until the end of this month... View full entry
