Its the global economic paradigm, stupid!

As anyone who has been even remotely cognizant of the news can tell you, the US is facing some bad times. We are having credit failures, banking collapses, increased food costs, increased energy costs, a craptacular housing market, and a general retail slump. The last one is worrisome to me, the incessant purchasing of the American middle class has been the economic engine keeping this boat afloat and paddling upstream. With the recent closing of national chains such as Steve and Barry and the downsizing of Starbucks I have to wonder how this is affecting the independent merchant, and then I stop and realize that except for the high-end boutiques and artists and artisans there really are no more mom and pop shops in this country. But that chilling thought aside, the area most visibly harmed in this country has been the housing market.

Breadlines, are they our future?

[Image via TRiver.]

As anyone who has been even remotely cognizant of the news can tell you, the US is facing some bad times. We are having credit failures, banking collapses, increased food costs, increased energy costs, a craptacular housing market, and a general retail slump. The last one is worrisome to me, the incessant purchasing of the American middle class has been the economic engine keeping this boat afloat and paddling upstream. With the recent closing of national chains such as Steve and Barry and the downsizing of Starbucks I have to wonder how this is affecting the independent merchant, and then I stop and realize that except for the high-end boutiques and artists and artisans there really are no more mom and pop shops in this country. But that chilling thought aside, the area most visibly harmed in this country has been the housing market. People have lost their houses and many who haven’t are trapped in their homes until the market rises again. This directly affects the architectural community in this country; the majority of architectural services are performed in the residential sector, either as new construction or renovation. With people being upside down in their mortgages, there is little available capital for renovation and additions, and less demand for new homes. Less new homes means less institutional (schools and government) construction and in turn less incentives for commercial construction. The great hope has been that while the credit market is global, the housing market slump would stay local, or at least national. But this article in the Scotsman, Architect firm axes workers – Scotsman.com Business, helps to drive home the point that this economic crisis is no longer a local event.

Now as a community, we architects have two choices, we can either shrug and play ostrich until we too have to join the breadlines or we can try to design a solution. I think that if we can help change the design discourse from luxury and excess to efficiency and thrift we will see a capital return on our efforts. But I have to stress that cutting budgets are not enough. There is no reason why architects are not developers in the US, we are skilled in design and planning in ways that developers aren’t and we can see beyond the bottom line to the total life and health of a project. In addition, I think we need to start thinking locally again and starting small. We as designers should lobby our local governments to construct well designed bus shelters and other utilitarian spaces, and if the mass transit system doesn’t exist we should push for its development.

Article: Real Estate Road Trips Scout Troubled Market

The Decadence of the American Housing Market

So I don’t know how I missed this, but apparently on Monday, March 31st The Washington Post ran an article about the new phenomenon of Foreclosure Tours in the DC/NOVA metro area (Click here for the article). This strikes a sore spot with me, it makes me think of the Katrina tours that sprung up in New Orleans once tourists started to return to the city. Now I know this is a different sort of animal; the article describes these tours as “foreclosure seminars on wheels” and they are intended to help fill in neighborhoods instead of to educate. Yet in the end, I wonder, aren’t they both ways of profitting off of the pain and suffering of others?

Now I know that this in and of itself is not really architecture or design related, but I feel as if the whole foreclosure mess stems from the modern architecture and urban development of the US. For the past century we have been spreading farther and farther from urban centers and the average american living space has ballooned, this has not only affected us mentally and physically, but it is also affecting us environmentally and monetarily. As we move farther from the cities we need to travel farther to reach our employment, have less mass transit available to us, and the larger properties get the more spread out they must be. Where a 1/4 acre of land was plenty large for each Levit house (and considered private in comparison to inner city living), a modern McMansion would hardly fit within the property lines and required setbacks of the same lot. Daily travel becomes more expensive — monetarily and environmentally — especially with a lack of decent regional rail systems. Add all of this into a market in the past few years where 0% ARM’s were a common thing and a mind set which said that ownership is always better than rental, and its easy to see how we got in this situation.

The thing that interests me is that no one is suggesting that as a solution to the housing crisis we start building rail lines or beefing up mass transit systems and encouraging urban and suburban densification. Condo and apartment living provides many environmental and economical advantages to single family home ownership — heating and cooling loads are lower and more averaged, water usage is decreased because there is less lawn/planting per person, and there is less land being used for housing which allows for more land being used for other needs. While I may have some design and business issues with the new urbanist town centers and mixed use developments I do believe that they are a long term plan for dealing with housing.