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Monday, August 25, 2008
Traditional Architecture & Urbanism = Conservative (NOT)
ONE REACTION TO MY POST BELOW is to portray it as reactionary and anti-modern, as though the current architectural fashion for Starchitecture and a self-proclaimed avant-garde (with a long-expired sell-by date, imo) is somehow more progressive. It's not.
Politically, I vary, depending on the issue, between a social leftist and a social moderate. Economically, I'm progressive. I agree with the idea that capitalism is the best system we have, and with the long-standing American idea that it has to be controlled or else it will run amok (see TR and FDR). Culturally, I've been an early adopter of computers and the internet and more importantly agree with people like Wired's Kevin Kelly and Senator Obama that the internet helps point the way to a more open, democratic and bottom-up world.
I firmly believe in progress, and that civilizations have progressed. I like to point out that when I was a kid (and I'm not that old), our nation's capital had legal segregation of the races. While today, a black man is the leading candidate for President.
Furthermore, I was trained as a Modernist architect, and like most Americans, I'm not ideological about Modernism, either pro or con. I am passionate about the need to make good, sustainable cities, towns, villages and neighborhoods, and that produces conflicts with the egocentric, object-oriented Starchitect system. And with the ideological and very limited Modernism taught at schools like Tulane, which could be the poster child for the state of American architectural education in 2008.
I've never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, and I'm wild about Obama.
BTW, Karl Rove owns a house in the New Urban resort pictured above, but so do a lot of people with Obama and Clinton stickers.
August 25, 2008 in Architecture, Classicism, Culture, Current Affairs, Education, New Urbanism, Urbanism | Permalink
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I just stumbled upon your website looking for New Urbanism pictures to show my new boss. He had never seen it before. I was laid off from my previous firm I helped start called "Hagerman New Urbanism" when they couldn't get make the cash flow because they were ivory tower architects. I was with the man for six years since before I graduated. He thought he knew what New Urbanism was. He didn't. He even said his giant "technical community college / day school" that was built in the middle of prime farm land miles from anything else and surrounded with parking lots was NU because it was "market driven." He picked that talking point out of some literature and ran with it. He was not an unintelligent man, though he was confused some how about NU. In a heated debate once he asked me point blank what I thought NU was. I said, it is a return to pre-war neighborhood planning techniques utilizing high-density mixed-use walkable development oriented around mass transit districts. The other thing we did well was mega-churches which were almost always metal buildings and laid out in what I would call "plantation style master planning." When we finally got our hands dirty with some urbanism after three years we got so deeply entrenched in an massive eminent domain issue that once the city council was replaced our project, of which were planning on developing a part, was canceled.
So I lost my job. My boss went without a pay check for over six months before he let it happen. They were just banking too heavily on that big urban project, not only as designers but as developers. But the deeper meaning behind loosing my job is that our firm couldn't aford payrole taxes. He would tell me ofter about how writting the payrole tax check at the end of every month was so excruciating.
Obama workers have called me multiple times and they can never acount for my story. They don't understand how high taxes could contribute to lay offs in an era of supposed tax cuts. I don't believe that taxes are low enough. I am pleased to hear that Obama would lower taxes for middle class. I need the money!
I have talked to Obama campaign workers on the phone who 1) were woefully ignorant of federalism and states rights issues, and 2) actually and explicitly advocated class warfare and strongly implied that this is the official Obama policy. The tele-campaigner who called my cell phone said, "Obama is going to tax the rich to give money to people like you and me." This person did not know my financial situation, how did they know if I would be a benefactor of Obama's great generosity? The bottom line is that Obama's political theory is the one based on fear mongering and misinformation by promulgating class hatred. The reason I am opposed to progressive class engineering like this is that taxation of the rich will be only the beginning. After four more years my family, which can barely make ends meet as it is, may be put into that category with all the other so called "rich people" and become, overnight, the object of scorn and derision.
If Obama is elected I can foresee one of two things. 1) My employer will be taxed so much he will no longer be able to afford keeping me as an employee therefore making me a poor person in need of the Obama nanny state. 2) We should quit our jobs the day after the election anyway and spend our savings on drugs. Either way we will be bereft of the heavy burden of responsibility for our lives and join the masses of pervs and miscreants raking in the welfare dollars at other people's expense.
I once got into an argument in class with a teacher when I said architects should be politically conservative because without developers with extra cash to invest in facilities we would be out of a job as would all the construction workers. Instant recension. That is just what happened in Missouri. I am lucky to have a job at all.
I don't support Busch, he was to liberal. No one has been able to explain ho I cam going to have a job in Obama-nomics. I really like what you have said, so please shed some light on this for me. P.S. I don't watch television, but anything which will stop people from shooting others and themselves would be appreciated. Well, I got get back to work designing sewage treatment plants so my tax dollars can pay for other people who stay at home all day watching game shows.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Posted by: Ryan Close at Sep 5, 2008 6:51:33 PM
I just stumbled upon your website looking for New Urbanism pictures to show my new boss. He had never seen it before. I was laid off from my previous firm I helped start called "Hagerman New Urbanism" when they couldn't get make the cash flow because they were ivory tower architects. I was with the man for six years since before I graduated. He thought he knew what New Urbanism was. He didn't. He even said his giant "technical community college / day school" that was built in the middle of prime farm land miles from anything else and surrounded with parking lots was NU because it was "market driven." He picked that talking point out of some literature and ran with it. He was not an unintelligent man, though he was confused some how about NU. In a heated debate once he asked me point blank what I thought NU was. I said, it is a return to pre-war neighborhood planning techniques utilizing high-density mixed-use walkable development oriented around mass transit districts. The other thing we did well was mega-churches which were almost always metal buildings and laid out in what I would call "plantation style master planning." When we finally got our hands dirty with some urbanism after three years we got so deeply entrenched in an massive eminent domain issue that once the city council was replaced our project, of which were planning on developing a part, was canceled.
So I lost my job. My boss went without a pay check for over six months before he let it happen. They were just banking too heavily on that big urban project, not only as designers but as developers. But the deeper meaning behind loosing my job is that our firm couldn't aford payrole taxes. He would tell me ofter about how writting the payrole tax check at the end of every month was so excruciating.
Obama workers have called me multiple times and they can never acount for my story. They don't understand how high taxes could contribute to lay offs in an era of supposed tax cuts. I don't believe that taxes are low enough. I am pleased to hear that Obama would lower taxes for middle class. I need the money!
I have talked to Obama campaign workers on the phone who 1) were woefully ignorant of federalism and states rights issues, and 2) actually and explicitly advocated class warfare and strongly implied that this is the official Obama policy. The tele-campaigner who called my cell phone said, "Obama is going to tax the rich to give money to people like you and me." This person did not know my financial situation, how did they know if I would be a benefactor of Obama's great generosity? The bottom line is that Obama's political theory is the one based on fear mongering and misinformation by promulgating class hatred. The reason I am opposed to progressive class engineering like this is that taxation of the rich will be only the beginning. After four more years my family, which can barely make ends meet as it is, may be put into that category with all the other so called "rich people" and become, overnight, the object of scorn and derision.
If Obama is elected I can foresee one of two things. 1) My employer will be taxed so much he will no longer be able to afford keeping me as an employee therefore making me a poor person in need of the Obama nanny state. 2) We should quit our jobs the day after the election anyway and spend our savings on drugs. Either way we will be bereft of the heavy burden of responsibility for our lives and join the masses of pervs and miscreants raking in the welfare dollars at other people's expense.
I once got into an argument in class with a teacher when I said architects should be politically conservative because without developers with extra cash to invest in facilities we would be out of a job as would all the construction workers. Instant recension. That is just what happened in Missouri. I am lucky to have a job at all.
I don't support Busch, he was to liberal. No one has been able to explain ho I cam going to have a job in Obama-nomics. I really like what you have said, so please shed some light on this for me. P.S. I don't watch television, but anything which will stop people from shooting others and themselves would be appreciated. Well, I got get back to work designing sewage treatment plants so my tax dollars can pay for other people who stay at home all day watching game shows.
Sincerely,
Ryan
Posted by: Ryan Close at Sep 9, 2008 8:54:07 AM
Ryan,
Sorry it took so long for your comment to post. There was a bug in the system.
Bush ran on "smaller government." But like his father and Reagan, he's leaving the government bigger and with more debt than when he came in.
Google should be able to find recent stories, including one in the New York Times, that show that everyone but the rich has done better under Democratic Presidents than Republican Presidents for the last few decades. The economy is stronger, the budget is on sounder footing and the average person has more money.
Compare the economy Bush received to the one he's leaving us.
John
Posted by: john massengale at Sep 12, 2008 10:01:50 AM
Ryan, back in 1980, Ronald Reagan asked the following questions (people only seem to remember the first one):
"It might be well if you ask yourself are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe? That we're as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then I think your choice is very obvious as to who you'll vote for. If you don't agree, if you don't think that this course that we've been on for the last four years is what you would like to see us follow for the next four, then I could suggest another choice that you have."
*^*^*
The problem is, by Reagan's standards, the Democratic Party is the one the represents his kind of conservatism today. The Republicans have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.
Posted by: Hal O'Brien at Sep 17, 2008 3:39:54 AM
