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Rebuilding America's Infrastructure: The Key to Economic Healing?

  
"Someone in Beijing must be laughing."- said Fareed Zakaria on his show today, GPS on CNN (airs Sunday mornings)- see link on comment #4. He was talking about how China is going to spend 1.5 trillion dollars to invest in strategic industries.  And what about us?  What are we doing here in the U.S. to rebuild our aging, inadequate infrastructure?

On CNBC’s Squawk Box, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman discussed the need for us to simultaneously balance the budget, reduce the deficit, handle the 2 current wars, execute economic reform, and tackle the need to rebuild America's infrastructure.  

Here is the link to his (December 3, 2010) segment on CNBC titled “Where the Jobs Are:”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1680661813&play=1

www.cnbc.com

We're well beyond filling in potholes.  And we have seen the collapse of a few bridges.  U.S. railways, water supply systems, schools, and airports are in disrepair.  They need to be renovated, if not completely rebuilt.  A Google search yields many reports by Civil Engineers rating our current infrastructure a "D"
http://apps.asce.org/reportcard/2009/grades.cfm

Why should we care?  Because we're tax-paying citizens.  And architects, in particular, have an opportunity to renovate or build new schools as many U.S schools are simply too old (c.1950s) and/or inadequate for the increasing population.

In George H. Miller's (former President of the National AIA) "open letter to 112th Congress" dated 11-08-10, he outlined three top goals for spurring economic growth.  He said, in part:

///- Returning Economic Vitality to Our Communities. Architects know all too well that a 21st century economy cannot thrive with a 19th century infrastructure. Yet in too many of our communities, aging buildings, roads and bridges have left Americans less safe and our nation lagging behind the infrastructure of its global competitors such as China. Studies have shown that our economy loses $80 billion per year in lost productivity due to congestion on our roadways. Worse, the foreclosure crisis has riddled neighborhoods in urban, suburban and rural areas with abandoned properties and rising crime. The AIA urges Congress to pass legislation that empowers communities to plan more vibrant and sustainable futures that give people real choices about where they live and how they travel.///


We need a plan.  We need a bill.  According to Urban Design and Regional Planning standards, such an action plan is about 25-50 years past due.

So, should architects take a more active role in this process?  Is it naive or off base to think we could offer our strategic planning and organizational skills, and be consultants to civil, structural, and mechanical engineers, scientists, and other related professions to create a prioritized plan to rebuild the U.S. infrastructure?

I assert that architects have the knowledge, the capabilities, and the creative vision to forge a cohesive, realistic plan, and a workable strategy to educate and equip our nation's leaders in Washington, D.C. on this subject. 

A new book by Eric J. Cesal, "Down Detour Road: An Architect in Search of Practice," shares a great quote he borrowed from a RIBA journal written many years ago in 1968 encouraging the architects of that time to play a more active role:

"There are three reasons why architects should set themselves to provide this comprehensive service.  The first is that they are there, trained however imperfectly to think more comprehensively than other relevant disciplines, with a cast of mind that veers habitually (unlike the engineer's) from the particular to the general.  The second, less disinterested, is that if they do not achieve this capability they will find themselves sooner than they expected on the fringes of decision-making rather than at the centre, acting as stylists for other people's products.  The third is that experience in countries where architects occupy this fringe position, shows that such societies get inferior buildings in every sense of the word." 4






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Bibliography:
Cesal, Eric J., Down Detour Road: An Architect in Search of Practice, MIT Press, http://mitpress.mit.edu, c. 2010, p. 32; Reference note 4: Lords Esher and Llewelyn-Davies, "The Architect in 1988," RIBA Journal 75 (October 1968), p. 450.

 

Note: Any links that did not "go live" in the main body of the blog can be found in the Related Link section below. Bldgblog is a great site, I highly recommend it.
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