After the collapse of Bear Stearns and the desperate bailout by JP Morgan and the Federal Reserve Board, it seems like the media is finally waking up to the mass collapse of the American housing market. See this video on people burning their homes or this one on tent cities springing up in Los Angeles to house the newly dispossesed. If, in the 1960s, architecture was damaged by the alliance of modernism with a failing business culture, what will it mean to the discipline when architecture is at the very core of a failed economy? What will does it mean that architecture's overindulgence in lifestyle culture has proven, quite literally, bankrupt? 

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that the New York Times expressed deep confusion that a real estate bubble had taken place. I wondered aloud why the Times didn't see the real estate bubble for what it was when, in contrast, the Economist had expressed concern years earlier? Is it that the Times hires reporters straight out of college or is there something more? Maybe it's that the population of Manhattan has always increased?*

Well, the answer came this week when I gave the students in my spring Network City course Harvey Molotch's seminal essay "The City as Growth Machine." Molotch's analysis is of the way that certain industries—primarily the finance and real estate industries—dominate urban politics with the intention of expanding their businesses. These interests promote a naturalized view of growth in which we are simply not to question that cities will always get bigger or that they should always get bigger.

But Molotch also points out that newspapers encourage the growth machine as a way of expanding their subscription base. Moreover, foreshadowing the argument of the rather naïve creative cities movement, arts organizations such as the symphony, opera, and art museums are also beholden to the model of the city as growth machine. I'll leave it to you to imagine where architects are in all this. 

So much for objectivity then. I suppose that we can forgive the Times for playing its structural role (not having a single urban base, the Economist would find little benefit in playing urban booster) if we really have to, but in rereading Molotch's essay (and it is available at that link above) it seems crucial to me to ask what the broader consequences of such allegiances are and what architects might do to be critical of them. Certainly not things like this (e.g. OMA in Dubai…note that Delirious New York was written at the lowest point in that table below). 

*Heavy sarcasm intended. Sure, Manhattan's population has gone up lately, but like most American cities, this is only a small uptick after a sustained decline. New York City has continually expanded. Not so for Manhattan.

See the following figures, borrowed form Wikipedia. note that Manhattan was 1/3 more populous in 1910! 

Yesterday, within the space of five minutes two stories from the major media outlets struck me as hilarious.

The first was from Wired. Some five years after the first show I had at CLUI about One Wilshire, they have a gallery of photographs of the place at Wired.com. Seems like little has changed. Seems like they didn't bother to do anything with the copy of Blue Monday we sent them except get a good idea or two for a somewhat belated photo piece. Seems like they couldn't get any better shots even with their professional team. Wired's looking tired. What's up with that, Chris? I mean really, at least they could have asked Nicholas Carr and me to talk about One Wilshire and the future of such data hotels. THAT would have been interesting. Ah, but you have to love the media. That's why we academics do believe in searching for prior art on a topic and citing it. Even if it means we have to try harder to be original, it makes what we do write about so more interesting.  

Here's a standing offer to Chris and other editors of major technology magazines: give me a theme issue to edit and I'll give you something worth grabbing off the newsstands, not a rehash of five year old work. 

The second was from the New York Times and was entitled "How the Bubble Stayed Under the Radar." In trying to account for the longevity of the bubble, this piece had a bit more content, but its first premise—that nobody saw the bubble coming—was strange. I think I've been talking about it since 2003 or so. Has nobody else noticed? I guess this blog's readership is only in the thousands…

Anyway, this was a classic bubble: only the very deluded believed otherwise (or the very calculating—on a foreign exchange basis, there is no bubble…an American house that has doubled in price since 2002 has seen no gain vs. its value in Euros…but if then that leads you to think of what happened to salaries in the US under GWB). Everyone else (and this means you, real estate agents and bankers) knew it would collapse, they just wanted to cash out first. (financial disclaimer: I got rid of all the REITs in our 401k's a couple of years ago and put them into global equities).

It's still rather surprising to me that Manhattan continues its bubbley behavior. Maybe when the Europeans realize just how little their fabulous investment is netting them given the falling dollar, they'll wise up. Maybe when the most interesting and talented Manhattanites begin to flee in droves to other cities (but where? not many candidates in this country? probably to Europe), it'll begin to happen. 

Most of all, however, I'm amazed by architects. Due to the time involved in making buildings and the heaviness of the capital needed, architecture is traditionally a slow profession. Still, can it really be that architects haven't noticed that the boom is over? Sure, China and Dubai have kept the system on life support, but construction in the former is going to cease the moment the Olympics start and the latter is merely another mad boom economy, entirely fueled by debt (see here). When collapse comes it will be grim and sustained. All too well I remember the recession of the 90s (or that of the 80s) when architects had great opportunities to work at the local café.  

But those of us who have been diligently working in the field of the expanded architect will still be here, welcoming your new ideas with open arms. Now more than ever, working on the periphery to expand what architecture is and what architecture can do is critical for the future of the profession.   

Over at the Atlantic Monthly, Christopher B. Leinberger suggests that suburbs are "the next slum." In his article for the March issue, he observes a massive oversupply in housing and suggests that Americans are moving, en masse, back to the city. The result, he concludes, is that the suburbs will be as eviscerated as cities were in the 1950s. 

Not so fast. Suburbs may have an oversupply of housing and older, inner ring suburbs are increasingly the first destination for immigrants, but cities have their own problems, not the least of which is a huge amount of purchasing by investors and global travelers who want an pied-à-terre in every major city.

See this harrowing article from the New York Times on life at the Plaza Hotel, recently converted to condos. In this scenario, reminiscent of Hollow City, the history of late 1990s San Francisco by Rebecca Solnit, cities become impossibly expensive playgrounds for a global élite with more ordinary individuals such as cooks, nurses, lawyers, dentists, doctors living on the periphery wearing T-shirts that say "Bring Back the Real NY."

Whenever I walk from to Sunrise Mart for lunch, I make it a point to avoid the construction site on Spring and Varick.

After all, anything by Donald Trump and Bovis Lend Lease can't be good. In terms of quality or safety, New York's construction is little better than Los Angeles's, even if the buildings appear to be made of real materials such as steel instead of wood.

So, it is that a scant three days after I told my friend Mimi that we were not, under any circumstances, walking under the scaffolding at that site she sends me this item: Worker is Killed in Accident at Trump Soho Tower. Another outrage from the man who put "You're Fired!" on national television. Of course the global élite that will inhabit this structure one day will be to uninformed to notice, but just think of the quality of construction in the building. Nice place to live.  

I noted two interesting stories about technology gone awry in the last week.

The first is about the misuse of GPS technology in Europe. Looking for shortcuts, truck drivers use GPS devices with maps that don't adequately show just how small streets in older towns really are. The results are dangerous conditions and traffic jams as giant trucks wander into historic villages. See here.

The second explores the consequences of mobile phone use in automobiles and how a study now prove it makes traffic worse, which of course creates a feedback loop. See here.

Derek Lindner points out that Levitt & Sons is bankrupt. See here and the IHT.

On the way back from Limerick, I did two things Dubai-related. First, I wound up helping a fellow returning from Dubai find his way around the JFK AirTrain. We talked a bit about that fabled city (cue descriptions of long-vanished cities from  One Thousand and One Nights) and he mentioned that 3/4 of the world's cranes were now there. Later, on the way back to Montclair, I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal's business section that someone had left behind on the New Jersey Transit train. More on Dubai. It seems that the massive construction is coming just as the city-state's flow of oil has started to dwindle. Moreover, in comparison to the other states around it, at least, Dubai is undertaking some fairly massive debt financing. The article, together with a debate about it at the skyscraperpage's forum.

Alas, it's been a while since I've updated. Between repeated trips to the GSD to lecture, a difficult and still incomplete server transition, and final reviews at Columbia, time has been scarce. Moreover, I've been waiting on word on some projects that I'll be running from this blog, working behind the scenes on NetLab material (the launch of our office is just around the corner!), and waiting for Blue Monday to appear en masse in the states (try later this month).

And, as happens when I don't post for a while, the opening post seems all-too-important. The stakes rise. I begin to ponder site redesigns and it is that time of year again…these usually happen in May (hint: reader feedback wanted).

Then smaller topics don't get posted. And all the while you, dear reader, begin to wonder if I have passed on, or if I've finally tired of the longest running individual blog in architecture, or if you should just hit the delete key in your favorite RSS reader…

So, how better to start than with a heady dose of doom and gloom?

There's little question that the real estate bubble is starting to come apart across the US. It's a slow implosion rather than a fast pop, but things are starting to look grim in the overpriced landscape of the coasts. If under postmodernism, the most autonomous processes of architecture were colonized by capital (translation: the drawing became capitalized in shows like Houses for Sale and galleries like Max Protetch) then under early network culture the built domain has been thoroughly removed from reality by pricing that bore no relationship to reality and ever more irreal financial instruments (you didn't get that 5 year adjustable interest-only balloon-payment mortgage with 0% down, did you?).

But even the most advanced delusions ultimately have to come down to earth.This is something I've been pointing out for a while, but here is more grist for the mill. The Orange Country Register reports that job growth is slowing and suggests that the declining real estate is responsible for this. 16.7 percent of OC jobs are in real estate, construction, or related financial fields. The construction industry has ballooned by 148% in the 14 years since the bottom of the last cycle. The statistics in Los Angeles are little different.

Construction is the new factory job, highly paid work for unskilled labor. Illegal immigrants and cash workers are far more common than in other industries (in Southern California, Home Depot has begun to institutionalize the lines of day laborers in front of their centers).

How much of the much vaunted decline in crime has to do with the fact that you can get great pay and a good lifestyle legally in construction as opposed to risking your neck in crime? What will happen to the legions of unskilled laborers, many of whom have no papers and no command of English, as the bubble continues its downward trend? As these jobs go bust, crime will rise as it always does. As family bread-winners who have been employed in an industry subject to cyclical downturns find themselves without a job—and in many cases face foreclosure of loans given under criminal terms—their reaction will be, understandably, not pretty.

On of my current projects is a book on Los Angeles during the last decade. Even as it tells the improbable story of the recovery of Southern California, by the time it is published, the region's economic landscape will likely resemble Mike Davis's City of Quartz once again. If you look at the demographics for the area since 1940 (!), each decade shows Southern California being divided more and more into poor regions worthy of the developing world (note well: the amount of terrain devoted to these grows every decade) and insanely rich mountain and coastal communities. The City of Quartz may be back, with a vengeance.

UPDATE:

Another option, of course, is that the immigrant workers just head home, as the Washington Post suggests. But that would pose problems of its own for the poorer inhabitants of those communities who can't afford to go home and all the businesses dependent on these workers.

Looking something like a Roger Dean album cover, somewhere off the northern coast of Taiwain a pod city lies in ruin. Supposedly construction accidents at San Zhi generated fears that the site was haunted leading to the failure and eventual abandonment of the vacation complex.

Visit electro^plankton for more, then drop by flickr for another photoset.

From today's Washington Post: America's middle class city neighborhoods and suburbs are disappearing into a radically polarized landscape. City of Quartz? The whole country is following that model. See U.S. Losing Its Middle Class Neighborhoods