Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead' and the Problem with Ideology

Upon high school graduation, I was given a copy of Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead by a neighbor. A book whose protagonist is an unwavering architect was an appropriate gift as my neighbor knew that I would be heading off to architecture school 3 months later. At that time I was a naive 18 year old with limited knowledge about architecture. Thus, the story's main character, Howard Roark, seemed a good model to aspire to at the time given his ability to never compromise his perfect integrity.

  

I devoured Rand's book with intensity- fully absorbed by her descriptive prose. I loved how Roark was unmoved by attempts to undermine his magnificent designs. Only a few years later did I fully understand that the world created in The Fountainhead could never exist in reality. While Rand's characters do exhibit traits of people in the real world, they are exaggerations of these traits to the point of absurdity. Peter Keating, the talented architect who sells his soul for material gain; Ellsworth Toohey, the conniving art critic; Gail Wynand, the omnipotent yet flawed and lonely publishing mogul: all of these characters are caricatures lacking the complexity of real people.

Howard Roark,  the protagonist of the story, is also an exaggeration of pure genius and self-interest. Roark may have been better portrayed as an artist rather than an architect, because at least an artist has more opportunity to create without the impediments facing practicing architects. Even then, no human being, save sociopaths, could be as cold and devoid of emotion as Roark.

I was reminded again of the flaws of The Fountainhead last November when I read an excellent blog post by Josh Stephens on the urban planning website Planetizen. The post, titled Deconstructing a Tea Party Muse, discusses the worrying trend of U.S. citizens involved in the 'Tea Party' movement subscribing to the Randian notions of 'individualism' (i.e. self-interest) without concern for broader social aims.

It is well documented that Ayn Rand's objectivist ideology is essentially a reaction to Soviet Communism. Communism, in its pure ideological form, was a disaster, as was proven by the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of Maoism. Yet it is not communism, or its ideological opposite, individualism, that are at the root of conflict. The problem is the very notion of ideology itself.

Contrary to what many believe, the world is not binary, consisting only of 'either-or' absolutes. The world is fluid, different cultures see things through different interpretations. The Tea Party movement fails to see the world as it is, instead accusing anyone associated with anything other than rampant individualism a 'socialist' or a 'communist'- words that have lost their meaning due to their gross overuse.

Ideology of any form is dangerous, whether it be a political system or religious dogma. It is human nature to search for meaning, to make sense out of the chaotic environment around us. Ideology provides an easy solution. Unfortunately human nature is also fickle and emotions easily trump pure logic.

Perhaps this would be too unnerving a reality to face for the Tea Party free-market ideologues, radical Islamist militant groups, evangelical Christians, or any other group that strictly adheres to a fundamental set of beliefs that leaves no breathing room for differing opinions or interpretations. The further clashing of belief systems in an ever-connected world is a grim prospect indeed.

New Blog: China Urban Development Blog

My apologies for the long delay on updating this blog. My most recent NewGeography article about China, Distilling China's Development, received a great deal of positive feedback and encouragement from readers to write more about China's urban development. Given that there appears to be a strong demand for information and analysis about the current state of affairs (and also because I currently live over here), I opted to create a new blog focusing specifically on China-related urban issues.

The new blog,China Urban Development Blog, will cover all issues related to urban development in China, including, but not limited to: the housing market, transportation infrastructure, architecture, historic preservation, social issues and macroeconomic development. In addition, special attention will be paid to China's 2nd and 3rd tier cities, which are currently in the throes of massive change, following on the heels of development in Beijing and Shanghai which were first to initiate large-scale urban reforms.

I will continue to maintain this blog as more of a personal channel through which to discuss architecture and urbanism issues that are non-China related. Although expatriated, as an American I still take a very great interest in the issues facing urban development in the Unites States. China and the U.S. have a lot to learn from each other, despite their very different histories and cultures. My aim is to strike a balance, find common ground, and come to conclusions that will ultimately help both prosper and build successful cities for the 21st Century.

Floating China's Currency Will Not Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back to the U.S.A.

Many urbanists (myself included) lament the demise of manufacturing in the once great industrial cities across America. As such, urban planners have taken to proposing various solutions to revitalizing these decaying regions. Prior to the Great Recession, many of these solutions promoted the Silicon Valley mantra of information technology and knowledge work to lure what is known as the creative class. That idea failed to materialize, so now it seems urban policy wonks have thrown in the towel so to speak and shifted gears to discussing the best way to ‘shrink’ cities in post-industrial decline.

The dialogue regarding the death of manufacturing in America has been going on for at least a couple decades, perhaps beginning with Michael Moore’s 1989 documentary Roger & Me, where he examines the dire impact of General Motors assembly plant closures in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore’s film incites a gloomy outlook for Flint’s future as he shows local leaders hopelessly vacillate over ways to replace lost jobs. More than 20 years later, Flint’s future doesn’t look any brighter than it did back then.

Flint is just one representative example of an American city in post-industrial decline. Among planners and urbanists, Detroit is the preferred charity case (Aaron Renn did a good summary of Detroit interventions in this NewGeography piece last year). Yet Detroit and Flint, which seem to get an inordinate amount of attention, are far from the only problem cases in the U.S.  As a matter of fact, the loss of manufacturing has affected the whole country in a way that is perhaps not fully grasped in the same way the physical manifestation of a derelict city is.

The reality is that development equals opportunity and America is currently severely lacking in both. This affects the national morale as people continue to be wary about their future prospects. Unfortunately, ‘development’ as it is traditionally conceived, is directly at odds with the green movement. When it comes to new and proposed regulations regarding carbon emissions, hardly anyone in America today would be in favor of a large-scale factory building campaign. Furthermore, industries such as single-family home construction have failed to become a model of long-term sustainable employment. Certainly, at the beginning of the Millennium the home-building industry employed everyone from construction workers to mortgage brokers to city planners, but in the end the results of the boom proved to be disastrous.

One only needs to visit a city in China like Chongqing or Dongguan (among dozens of others) to get a quick reality check about how the paradigm of opportunity has shifted eastward over the Pacific. It is not only the ‘cheap labor’ pool that has helped China rise to prominence, but the organizational structure of the top-down planning model. Surely, there are many other places around the world where one can find cheap labor but what has been China’s strength is the development of infrastructure, both physical and social, to allow growth to take place.

American companies have benefited tremendously from China’s global rise and low cost of doing business, so it is hypocritical for members of the U.S. Congress to criticize China over its ‘currency manipulation’. Rather than finding solutions, U.S. politicians are busy pointing fingers at the big red straw-man assuming that if China lets the value of its currency increase, manufacturing jobs will somehow magically come back to America. This is highly delusional thinking. China commentator Shaun Rein drives this point home in a February article for BusinessWeek when he states:

“China bashers are raising expectations too high with dubious assertions that if the yuan were revalued, manufacturing jobs would suddenly move back to the U.S. and the trade surplus would be reduced. If manufacturers found costs were too high in China, they wouldn't return to the U.S. They would just move to countries such as Vietnam and export back to the U.S. from even lower-cost production centers.”

So, in essence, America’s manufacturing demise is not a ‘China problem’ but rather an American one. Until politicians start focusing inward, opportunity and upward mobility for America’s future generations look bleak. There are always the techno geeks who believe that America’s future of opportunity lies solely in knowledge work. Realistically though, not every American is going to become a computer software engineer designing the latest ‘killer app’ for the iPhone.  Even more unnerving is the prospect of knowledge work being outsourced, which is already happening as ever more Asians master the language of computer programming.

Where does this leave America? Well, there appears to be no easy solution as global competition continues to grow. Government regulation preventing U.S. companies from outsourcing overseas does not seem to be in vogue, nor does trade protectionism make any sense in this day and age. Curiously enough, America’s strength lies in its cultural capital as the preeminent model for successful economic progress that is currently emulated by developing nations. Perhaps it is time America takes a cue from its own past glory and once again adopts an ambitious large-scale development program. Until this happens at a national level, America’s free fall will continue and urban planners will keep busy debating the best way to ‘shrink’ Detroit and possibly many more once-great American cities.

Style and the Pretense of 'Parametric' Architecture

'Algorithmic Housing' project in Shanghai by Marcin Pilsniak:
an exercise in 'parametric' frivolity

The word style is a pariah within the realm of high architectural design. Mention the word in any self-respecting design school and you are most likely to be mocked with derision. After all, an aspiring designer with cutting-edge ideas should not be held slave by the tyranny of history. Unfortunately, the disconnect between how the public versus design professionals see and evaluate architecture directly undermines the ability of the architecture profession to be understood or respected in a meaningful way.

In a recent piece for The Architects’ Journal, architect Patrik Schumacher attempts to counteract this disconnect by fully embracing the notion of style and acknowledging that outside of the design professions, style is ‘virtually the only category through which architecture is observed and recognized.’ Schumacher, a partner at Zaha Hadid Architects, uses this notion to argue in favor a new style dubbed parametricism. He proclaims, “Parametricism finally offers a credible, sustainable answer to the drawn-out crisis of modernism that resulted in 25 years of stylistic searching.”

The ‘25 years of stylistic searching’ refers to the period dominated by the reactionary architectural movements post-modernism and deconstructivism. Schumacher argues that these were not styles per se but rather ‘transitional episodes.’ This is his first mistake. However short-lived post-modernism and deconstructivism were, both movements share particular characteristics that can be classified as a style. His second mistake is to arrogantly assert that parametricism will somehow be above these two in its ability to create a ‘hegemonic unified style’.

There are many troubling things about parametricism, not the least of which being that most of the products of this particular style are aesthetically egregious. Yet the notion of parametricism, when thought of as a process rather than a style, is not inherently a bad thing. As a matter of fact, parametrics, or the definition of systems which are based on relationships, is quickly becoming a powerful tool for architects to design buildings faster and more efficiently than ever before.

But in his article, Schumacher is not talking about parametricism as a process but rather explicitly propagating a new type of aesthetic expression that is made possible by the power of computer modeling software. Exploiting technology to create new forms might seem revolutionary on the surface, but without broader social aims the movement is likely to quickly fall out of fashion.

A Modern History of Architectural Style

In his revolutionary 1908 essay, Ornament and Crime, Vienna architect Adolf Loos declared that architectural ornamentation was nothing short of a criminal act. He claimed that the truly modern man had no use for superfluous decoration on his home or dress, and compared architectural ornamentation to the tattoos of ‘degenerates and criminals’. Loos was of course rallying against the popular architectural style of the time, Art Nouveau.

With Ornament and Crime, Loos set the tone for the next century of architectural design. His message reached far and wide, influencing everyone from members of the Bauhaus to California-based immigrant architects Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra (both of whom happened to be students of Loos back in their native Austria). This new class of architecture, characterized by clean lines, right angles, smooth surfaces and neutral colors, came to be known as modern architecture.

Yet the first participants in the new modern style of architecture did not consider it a style at all, but rather an ideological movement (‘modern-ism’) – a complete rejection of the historical notion of ‘style’. Why should say, a house, be bound to the laws of architectural history when it could instead be, as Le Corbusier famously said, a ‘machine for living in’? The social agenda of the Modernists not only included a rejection of style, but also emphasized a new way of living for the masses. According to the Modernists, the key to living an enlightened existence was to put faith into the religion of technology.

By the latter half of the 20^th Century, a backlash against the purist dogma of modernism emerged. Beginning with Jane Jacobs’ 1961 extraordinary treatise against the pitfalls of modern urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she not only attacked the destructive policies of development but also the dehumanizing architecture of Le Corbusier-inspired public housing projects. Following in 1966, American architect Robert Venturi released his ‘gentle manifesto’, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture; a refutation of ‘the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern architecture.’

Venturi’s manifesto is in direct contrast to Loos’s Ornament and Crime. Where Loos derided ornamentation, Venturi celebrated it. Venturi went a step further in 1972 when he released Learning from Las Vegas along with his collaborators Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Learning was a major breakthrough in architectural discourse as it signaled a paradigm shift away from the archetypal Modern architect as ‘omnipotent creator’ peering down at his unenlightened subjects from the ivory tower. Instead, Venturi and company courageously embodied a contrarian attitude by discovering the crass banality of American life in the Mojave Desert boomtown.

Venturi’s explorations led to what would later be known as post-modern architecture. The related movement, broadly referred to as post-modernism, permeated not only architecture but other disciplines as well (art, fashion, cinema, literature, philosophy, etc…) and sought to come to terms with the condition of ‘late-capitalism’. In other words, post-modernism embraced plurality, subjectivity, and uncertainty as truths (whereas under the Modernist paradigm, ‘technology and progress’ were the only truths).

Although today the world arguably remains in a state of postmodernity, the architectural community has since rejected the post-modern mantra. It seems that despite the attempts of Venturi and others to reconnect architectural expression with the common language of man (in contrast to the cold, geometric abstractions of modernism), consensus regarding post-modern architecture is that it was a collective error in stylistic and aesthetic judgment. This is too bad, as post-modernism is now judged within architectural circles as an unfortunate ‘style’ rather than a useful method to analyze the communicative and symbolic capabilities of architecture.

Following post-modernism, an unapologetically cynical style of architecture emerged. Deconstructivism did not do much to enhance the quality of architectural dialogue among the public but rather established a new basis for formal genesis: the ‘chaotic state of a globalized world’. Like its stylistic older brother, post-modernism, deconstructivism looked to define a novel architectural language. Practiced by architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Zaha Hadid, Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman, deconstructivist architecture is characterized by its jutted angles, fragmented appearance and rough sculptural qualities.

UFA-Cinema Center in Dresden, Germany by Coop Himmelb(l)au:
Typical example of deconstructivist architecture

Parametricism: A Continuation of Deconstructivism

In the end, post-modernism and deconstructivisim are two sides of the same architectural coin. Both sought to counteract the aesthetic poverty and failed social agenda of modernism. Parametricism is not much different from deconstructivism in its disorderly physical appearance. Yet instead of the tilted planes and sharp angles of deconstructivism, parametric architecture takes on a ‘blob-like’ formal expression. The supposed social benefits of both styles are not much different either. As Schumacher explains in his article:

“Parametricism aims to organize and articulate the increasing diversity and complexity of social institutions and life processes within the most advanced centre of post-Fordist network society.”

It’s a nice sound bite for sure, but contradictory in its execution. Certainly, especially in the Western world, we are living in an evolving ‘post-Fordist network society’. This does not mean we need to make all of our new buildings look like blobs, though. If anything, ‘network society’ is unsympathetic to architectural form and renders it meaningless. What does it matter if we live on the 75^th floor of a crystalline skyscraper in Dubai or a cookie-cutter suburban home in Atlanta, as long as we are digitally connected? 

Strangely enough, while the physical form of buildings has become ever more meaningless in our network society, the tools which we use to connect have taken on a more prominent role on fulfilling our design needs. Think of the stylish mobile phones, the iPads- these gadgets satisfy the design niche of representing current social zeitgeist better than a piece of architecture ever could.

Disrespectful of Reality, Better Suited for Virtual Worlds

Given that there is no social need for parametricism as a new 'epochal style,' is there any other value that these type of designs can provide? For wealthy developers looking to awe the public with unconventional buildings, the parametric blobs will most likely achieve a purpose. But after the initial shock of seeing something different, the public will realize just how hideous and useless these creations are and the style will quickly lose favor. Thankfully, parametricism will probably never become prolific within the built environment due to the exponential costs of constructing such unconventional forms. In fact, to this day the majority of parametric designs are confined to the realm of ‘paper architecture’, with few built works aside from small pavilions and art installations.

'Blob Wall' - a parametric art installation by architect Greg Lynn

Parametricism is also disrespectful of cities. Examining various renderings of proposals for parametric designs for infill projects will confirm this. Anti-contextual and disregarding classic architectural principals such as scale and proportion, parametric designs are better suited for the virtual worlds of video games and science-fiction movies. Just because we have the software to produce buildings that look like the ‘pods’ from The Matrix does not mean that we should build them.

Desperately Seeking Relevance in an Indifferent World

Credit should be given to Mr. Schumacher for being bold enough to be one of the first to declare parametricism as a legitimate style. And to be sure, the fact that top architecture schools around the world have adopted the parametric mantra adds some legitimacy to his argument. Ultimately though, his cause ends up missing the mark. Instead of engaging with the real world tackling relevant issues, Schumacher continues the tradition of myopic insularity within the avant-garde circles of the architectural profession.

While post-modernism as a style is no longer popular, the lessons of Venturi and the Postmodernists are now more pertinent than ever. The world is increasingly globalized and absolutes are still giving way to ever-more pluralism. Schumacher directly refutes this reality and even claims that parametricism must ‘combat stylistic pluralism.’ He continues by stating:

“The mainstream has, in fact, returned to a form of pragmatic modernism with a slightly enriched palette; a form of eclecticism mixing and matching elements from all modernism’s subsidiary styles. The inability of post-modernism and deconstructivism to formulate a new viable paradigm led to the return of modernism in the guise of minimalism as the only consistent, ideologically stringent style that confronts parametricism today. The primary confrontation in the struggle for stylistic hegemony is thus between parametricism and minimalism.”

Schumacher never explains why ‘pragmatic modernism with a slightly enriched palette’ is inferior to parametricism. He assumes that it is inferior because it builds upon lessons of the past and is not totally new and flamboyant. But in fact some of the finest architecture being built today is by architects whose work could be described as minimalist. Architects like Peter Zumthor, Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, and David Chipperfield design buildings that are formally understated, yet rich in materiality and spatial experience. They rely on classic design principles and a modern vocabulary to create buildings that appropriately respond to context while at the same time remain dignified and novel without resorting to gimmicks.

If anything, Schumacher’s article is timely as it represents the death rattle of the architecture profession as it is now conceived. To posit that parametricism is the ‘next big thing’ is nothing more than a poorly-veiled attempt at desperately seeking relevance and recognition in a world indifferent to the feelings of the architect. As the past 2-3 years of global economic slowdown has clearly demonstrated, the architecture profession and the livelihood of its practitioners are inextricably tied to the state of global financial systems. Coincidentally, the development of parametricism as a style took place during a time when economies were flush with credit– possibly giving the false impression that such creations would have the unlimited budgets to be built someday.

With the exception of a few Middle East Sheikdoms and to an increasingly lesser extent, China, the potential market for parametric architecture is fairly limited. This is not to say that the style will die-out overnight. Rather, parametricism is likely to continue being promoted in architecture schools as cutting-edge for a few more years before the trend wears itself out. Until then, Schumacher and his ilk would be better suited by spending their time preparing for a career change to video game design or developing a Second Life avatar.

Schumacher ends his piece by proclaiming, "Parametricism is ready to go mainstream. The style war has begun." What he doesn't realize yet is that he has already lost the war.

San Francisco Supervisors to Developers: Not In Our Backyard!

Rendering of the rejected proposal 555 Washington St.

with the Transamerica Pyramid behind

San Francisco reaffirmed its position as the most antagonistic to development city in America once again when it rejected a proposal for a new 38-story condo tower two weeks ago. The tower at 555 Washington Street, designed by local architecture firm Heller Manus, takes the form of a torqued cylinder, adding what would be a graceful and understated new member to the San Francisco skyline. Yet nice design does not matter when it comes to politics. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to turn down the proposal based on an EIR (environmental impact report) study that they claimed was 'fatally flawed'.

Preparing an environmental impact report is a fairly standard procedure for new development projects in California - this is in accordance with CEQA (The California Environmental Quality Act of 1970) which makes submitting an EIR a requirement for approval. Developers are cognizant of this and accept the up front costs of putting together an EIR in order to proceed with building their project. In the case of 555 Washington St., the developer had already spent upwards of $6 million dollars before the EIR was finally rejected. According to the developer representative, Andrew Segal, recirculating the EIR would cost an additional $1 million - an amount that essentially kills the project.

Real estate developers tend to have a negative reputation in the eyes of the public. To many, they are a ruthless, greedy and unscrupulous group of people out to destroy historic neighborhoods and natural habitats with their irresponsible yet highly profitable building projects. And to be sure, this reputation is not entirely unfounded. Stories like the epic battle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses and historically-based fictional narratives like the movie Chinatown have influenced the public consciousness to a point where the 'evil developer' has become a cultural archetype.

Preventing irresponsible development is why we have checks and balances like EIR studies and city planning commissions in the first place. Yet, San Francisco, notorious for its anti-development climate, takes the 'evil developer' archetype much too far. For a city that flaunts itself as a paragon of sustainability, San Francisco contradicts itself when it shoots down projects that would increase density - which would allow more people to call the city home. Instead, the lack of new development activity keeps prices unaffordable for the middle-class, contributing to the much despised 'sprawl' seen at the eastern fringes of the Bay Area. The hypocrisy is so palpable in fact that even Chris Daly, one of the most left-leaning San Francisco Supervisors, purchased a house in exurban Fairfield for his family last year.

I will concede that the developer for 555 Washington St. took an enormous risk by proposing a tower that exceeds the height limit of the site by 230 ft. In a last-ditch attempt at saving the project, the developer told the Board of Supervisors that they would lower it to comply with the 200 ft. height limit, but to no avail. This brings up another problematic issue in regards to development in San Francisco: zoning.

Architects are usually the first ones to take the blame for the poor aesthetics of a building - especially with something as visible and prominent as a skyscraper. Yet what most people do not realize is that zoning codes (building use, height limit, floor-to-area ratio, setbacks, bulk limits, etc...) set forth by local municipalities is what dictates the parameters of what can be built on a given site. This means architects must comply with these constraints when designing a project. All too often, complying with zoning codes while at the same time fulfilling the needs of the developer leads to a building that lacks proportional harmony. Architects can only do so much to 'dress-up' a building that is proportionally flawed. Poorly conceived zoning codes is why there are so many 'ugly boxes' dotting the skylines of American cities, not architects.

With the consideration of skyline aesthetics, it becomes apparent as to why the developer and architect for 555 Washington St. took the risk of breaking the height limit. At a height of 430 ft., the building still complies with the allowable F.A.R. (floor-to-area ratio) of the site. Early on, the design team probably realized that if they complied with the 200 ft. height limit while maximizing the F.A.R., the result would be a short, squat-looking building. Instead, they took a leap of faith and came up with a design that is proportionally sound and adds dynamism to the San Francisco skyline without being visually arrogant. Not only does the taller, slender tower look better aesthetically, the smaller footprint means that the developer could propose expanding the adjacent Redwood Park - which would create more open space for the city.

Ultimately none of this mattered to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Despite the effort put forth by the developer and the design team, the Board defaulted to their usual NIMBY stance and were able to play into the 'evil developer' archetype by claiming that the EIR was too lackadaisical. The failure of 555 Washington St. to get approval is especially harsh at a moment when most development in the U.S. is still frozen due to the unwillingness of banks to give out construction loans. Not only would've 555 Washington St. added much-needed residential square-footage to the city, it would've provided hundreds of construction jobs for unemployed workers.

One can only hope that other American cities do not follow the San Francisco model of (anti)development. While the majority of Americans are likely to continue preferring the suburban model of low-density living in the future, there remains a growing market of Americans who would instead opt for an urban lifestyle were it more affordable. In conclusion, I'll leave you with a New York Times blog post by Harvard Professor Ed Glaeser, who does an excellent job of articulating the need for more tall buildings in regards to the issue of housing affordability in cities: Taller Buildings, Cheaper Homes.

U.S. - China Trade Complications

Chinese President Hu Jintao is in Washington D.C. this week meeting with Barack Obama and other world leaders for the 'Nuclear Security Summit'. While the ominous discussion is likely to be focused on containing the nuclear threat to the world, underlying the meeting between Hu and Obama will be issues of trade. But before the U.S. goes on pushing China to revalue its currency in order to re-balance the trade deficit, the U.S. needs to take a good hard look at itself to understand why there is such an imbalance in the first place.

I am no economist, but I was flabbergasted by Paul Krugman's NY Times Op-Ed piece last month about pressing China over its 'currency manipulation'. It is rather audacious to suggest that the U.S. press China to increase the value of the renminbi (RMB), given that it is U.S. companies that have directly benefited from the cheap cost of labor in China for at least the past two decades. Hypocritical to say the least, that the U.S. press China only now on increasing the value of the RMB just as the country is beginning to enjoy the prosperity from being the 'world's factory'.

One American company that has benefited greatly from China's economic rise is General Motors. GM, headquartered, rather ironically, in the poster-child for American de-industrialization, Detroit, is one of the top selling automotive brands in China. Just this week, the company announced that annual sales may top 2 million in China - 4 years ahead of schedule. This is great news for GM executives and shareholders but meaningless to the average unemployed American auto-worker. Don't think for a second that those millions of new cars for Chinese consumers will be manufactured in America by American workers - nope - they are being made in the same market where they will be consumed. The United Auto Workers have already voiced their lament on this subject (UAW Furious Over New GM Plant in China), but to no avail.

Auto-makers are not the only American companies that have benefited tremendously from the low-cost of doing business in China. Santa Clara, California-based computer chip maker Intel has expanded its base in China to not only include manufacturing facilities but research and development facilities as well. This is unnerving because it means that China is no longer just a 'cheap place to manufacture things' but is also now a cheaper alternative for American companies looking to expand their R&D work. The outsourcing of knowledge work from the U.S. means that even highly-educated engineers and programmers will see their jobs moving overseas.

Outsourcing from the U.S. in search of cheaper labor is not a recent phenomenon but has been going on for some time now. CEO and corporate executives have said the same thing to justify these actions: "It's good for business" and "it benefits the American consumer because we will be able to deliver products at cheaper prices". While the latter statement has some truth to it, I believe that it is no longer a proper justification. How will Americans be able to consume anything if they don't have any money to spend because they don't have any income because they don't have any jobs?!?

Which brings us back to the issue of the value of the Chinese RMB. Currently, 1 U.S. dollar buys 6.85 RMB. Krugman and others suggest that this exchange rate undermines America's ability to compete with China in terms of manufacturing and exports. Well of course! This is an insulting revelation because it did not take a Nobel Prize-winning economist to figure it out - GM, Intel and others already knew this a long time ago. Even if China theoretically did raise the value of the RMB overnight, this would do nothing to bring manufacturing jobs to the U.S. - companies would just go somewhere cheaper like Vietnam, the Philippines or Indonesia.

But China will not do this because it would completely wreck their economic traction. Chinese leaders know this, and are very aware of the threats to social order that a devastated domestic economy would cause within their country. Not only would manufacturing jobs be lost, but a rapid rise in RMB value would inflate an already-shaky real estate bubble to astronomical proportions. Instead, Chinese leaders are doing all they can to keep a steady growth and avert catastrophe. Keeping the RMB valued at a low rate is critical in achieving this goal. If China does raise the value of the RMB in the near future, it most likely will be a just small increase to appease international pressure.

Furthermore, anything coming out of the U.S. Congress or President Obama pressuring China over the RMB value should be viewed by Americans as nothing more than political grandstanding. Indeed, Obama just refused to give a timeframe for China to act on the RMB. This proves that the talk coming out of Washington is nothing more than empty rhetoric meant to appease a clueless American populace looking for an easy scapegoat for their economic woes.

Readers of this blog might be wondering why I am talking about international trade and economics when my focus tends towards architecture and urbanism. The reason is because the the future of American cities lies on the ability of the U.S. to reinvigorate it's economy, and vice-versa. The industrial wastelands of the rust-belt are not an acceptable model for the future of the U.S. - nor are the over-priced consumption playgrounds of the 'luxury cities' like New York or San Francisco acceptable either. But in order to go about improving our cities and economy, we need to first tell the truth about why things are the way they are instead of blaming a straw-man (China, immigrants, terrorism, Iran, etc...) for all of our troubles.

2010 Pritzker Prize Winner(s): Japan's SANAA

Residential project by SANAA in Gifu, Japan

As an institution celebrated primarily by architects and the cultural elite, news of the annual Pritzker Prize typically eludes the general public's radar. This is unfortunate and reflects the ongoing reality that despite its ubiquity in the everyday world, most people fail to actively notice the art of building. The Pritzker Prize, sometimes referred to as the 'Nobel Prize for Architecture', does its part in helping to abate architectural apathy by bestowing its international honor upon a deserving practitioner each year.

Last week it was announced that the Japanese architectural duo SANAA would be the recipient of the 2010 Pritzker. Consisting of Kazuyo Sejima and her partner Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA's work is characterized by its delicate sensitivity and lightness. The architects are also masters at crafting spaces that play with the notion of transparency/translucency - giving their buildings an ephemeral quality.

Similar to last year's Pritzker recipient, Peter Zumthor, SANAA are quiet iconoclasts and unapologetic minimalists. This speaks volumes about the current architectural zeitgeist: specifically that the maxed-out deconstructivist building forms might finally be out of vogue. Hopefully this shift will stir architects and designers away from the whimsical swoops and jutted angles of the past two decades in favor of the more essential and timeless qualities of architecture.