Give Me Your Poor, Tired and...Unschooled

In the past week, I've come across of a few articles that describe well the nature of poor people and how the current public education system keeps them that way. Beyond the obvious flaws in the philosophy that dominate pedagogical thinking in our schools, some blame can go towards the oppressive design of the school buildings. Fellow blogger Scott Walker describes the schools he works in as prisons, a surprisingly accurate description of spaces organized for maximum visual control and security. This a particular quality of mediocre urban schools, where more attention is given to keeping track of kids and their whereabouts than actually teaching them anything. There is a reason that many public schools, particularly at the high-school level, are not planned like those leafy college campuses we all remember fondly. One recalls how attendance was rarely recorded, students often slept in, no one cared what you did in between courses and somehow at the end of four years, you learned a lot more than four years at the public high school.

I had the misfortune of attending a public high school that was quickly degenerating into another mediocre urban school. It had become clear to me that the authorities were more concerned about enforcing rules and security policy than celebrating academic achievement of any kind. Although I was among the top 5 in my entire class, I was sent to in-school detention twice for forgetting to wear my ID badge that I left at home. "In-House", as it was called, was a classroom where these supposedly terrible transgressors were prevented from attending class throughout the day so that a clueless and bored "teacher" would monitor you to make sure that you couldn't do the things that students are supposed to do. Worse, they treated in-house inmates as chain-gangs working to clean up the cafeteria after the last lunch period. Couple that humiliating experience with random pat-downs and metal detector screenings and it became clear that I had to get out of that school as soon as possible. I finished high-school one year early and treated myself to an exchange year abroad in Germany, attending the "gymnasium" (elite level high school over there), where the academic content was college level, the students wandered freely in and out to town and some even smoked like chimneys confidently in front of everyone on school grounds.

My old high school would abandon the ID badge policy a year later, citing its ineffectiveness in preventing strangers from infiltrating the campus.

It seems that things haven't improved at all if this post is any indication. Overcrowding has become a big issue in my old school district, and more an more resources are being diverted to effectively control the crowds and make schools an effective detention facility. This of course favors ever-expanding bureaucratization and thus prevents any meaningful educational reform. As an alumnus of such urban schools, such a progression towards high-security over useful learning was anticipated. Apparently, that has become the default state of affairs in suburban public schools as well. Paul Graham, a venture capitalist and computer start-up expert, recounts his experiences attending his local suburban public school from the point of view of a nerd. In initially trying to explain why nerds aren't popular, he goes further into identifying pathological problems of public schools in the modern era. It's one those few essays I've read that truly turned on a switch in understanding the experiences I had in public schools that I'd rather forget. Graham provides some hints as to how to improve secondary education, and correctly notes that many of the problems that afflict adolescents should not be passively accepted. His essay is definitely a must-read, and I recommend checking out his other insightful essays.

Still, I find that Graham writes from a perspective of relatively privileged upbringing and doesn't take into account enough the baggage students from poor families bring with them. All sorts of debilitating character traits afflict the poor and handicap their ability to be minimally schooled. The lack of character also seems to make them terrible agents for any kind of business transaction as well. Michael Lewis, a professional in the financial sector, sarcastically remarks how the media coverage of the current sub-prime lending crisis focuses almost exclusively on the careless wrongdoing of the lenders but ignores the responsibility of the poor engaging in reckless borrowing (hattip: instapundit). Before accusing him and myself on 'beating up on the poor', I would contend that much of the intractability of poverty comes from our unwillingness to do precisely that. For as long as we all frame the image of the poor as mere victims, no significant improvement of their lot can be expected. The transfer of government wealth in alleviating poverty seems to have the opposite effect, since all it does is infantilizes an an entire class of people. Employers who manage poor workers often find that they have to treat them like children, looking over their shoulder on every assigned task and taking out extra time to go over their work and frequently re-doing it. A very close friend of mine works with many workers coming from the lower class, and is constantly frustrated in trying to hand them any modicum of responsibility. She has been told that one tried and true method in getting these people to successfully complete tasks is to complement in them in the same exact that she complements her two-year old son. So far, it apparently works, but it is quite a sad indictment on the poverty of character among the poor.

Other than not having much money, there seems to be little that likens the protagonists of the "Grapes of Wrath" to the masses of illiterates that populate today's urban schools. Poverty has become institutionalized, and rather than excusing it as a by-product of an inherently unjust capitalist system, we now are guilty of excusing the cultural rot and the lack of character that accounts for much of poverty today.

KROB 2007: A Call for Entries

The 33rd annual Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation competition awaits new entries. KROB recognizes mastery in hand delineation as well as digital rendering techniques rather than the merit of the building rendered. The winning entries from exhibit characteristics often left out in everyday architectural drafting, such as conveying moods or other-wordly landscapes, and most importantly, they inexplicably move the viewer. Such aspects are not exclusive to the special effects brought about by computer software but also with graphite pencil and watercolor, as these traditional hand techniques give a picture a particular richness and liveliness.

The Ken Roberts Competition is the longest-running architectural illustration of its kind in the United States, awarding cash prizes in categories for both students and professionals and in both hand drawing and digital media. Submissions are to be received by October 31, 2007, and multiple entries per person can be entered. Finalists will have their work exhibited at the office of the competition's sponsor, the American Institute of Architects' chapter in Dallas. The winning entries will be announced and presented at a reception at the Magnolia Theater in Dallas on November 15th, where selected jurors will discuss the qualities of the selected works.

The competition is open to individuals in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Entries can be submitted electronically at the competition's website or by mail. All competition details, including entry forms, fees, and background to the competition can be found on http://www.krobarch.com/. If you have any questions on the competition, you can leave a comment under the blog posting or email the competition administrator at the address infoRequest@krobarch.com.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for those who have produced veritable works of art in the process of completing building projects for school or for private clients. Unlike most architectural competitions that demand countless hours of unrenumerated work for a project that is often hypothetical in nature, the KROB rewards work that has already been realized for no other purpose than to artfully to describe an architectural concept. The result can be impressive and inspiring.

Meet the President's New Architect...

The George W. Bush Presidential Library has finally chosen its architect, the renowned Robert A. M. Stern from New York. My first impression was of mild disappointment, but that quickly faded to an overall lack of surprise. After all, the library is slated to occupy the eastern edge of the SMU campus, a college whose reputation is deeply tied to culturally conservative elite that dominates the political and social scene of Dallas. The president and his library's planning committee made its intention clear to have the new complex blend with the campus' neo-Georgian architecture, and Mr. Stern has definitely been capable of doing that with his firm's many previous projects on university campuses throughout the country. It was clear just by looking over the shortlist released a few months ago of architects considered by the committee that there was no desire to insert a flashy piece of "starchitecture" in the heart of Dallas (actually, it will within the independent municipality of University Park, which along with high-end Highland Park, form an area called "the bubble".) Rather the list consisted of firms that had reputations as large and successful not for their cutting-edge design as they are for providing consistent satisfaction to their clients. The two other finalists for the library, Overland Partners and Page Southerland Page have solid reputations in Texas, having incorporated a handsomely modern regional vernacular in their large public projects. Neither of those firms could be characterized as part of the contemporary design forefront.


That is not to say the Robert Stern lacks the talent to produce avant-garde projects. In actuality, his incorporation of classical styles and planning principals made him one of the leaders in generating and popularizing the versatile Post-modern style during seventies and eighties. Along with his contemporaries Charles Moore, Michael Graves, Philip Johnson and Robert Venturi, Stern recognized a deep desire in the American marketplace for a return to an intelligible style influenced by past historical vocabularies. After beginning his career working for Richard Meier, Stern formed his own practice and pursued a style that responded to the inherent deficiencies of Modernism by restoring tradition and thus calling it "modern traditionalism". Because traditional modes of architecture developed sophisticated rules of composition and scale appropriate to important institutional buildings, Stern's style was embraced by many civic and institutional clients that desired gentle austerity and symmetry wich would relate to the surrounding context yet exhibit a dignified significance.

Stern's embrace of classicism was a particularly defiant stance to take within the architectural context of the seventies. Complementing the surrounding environment by almost literarily imitating stylistic elements and refusing to celebrate technological sophistication of the times were not the hallmarks of the modern architect. Such a subtle approach was at first courageous, but became the default position of an overwhelming majority commercial and civic clients in the following decades. In 2007, Stern has long ago ceased to be relevant in the ongoing evolution of architectural trends. With exception to school of architecture at Yale, in which Stern is the dean, few architectural schools study his work seriously as they did in the eighties during the heyday of the post-modern experimentation. Although he has demonstrated an ability to wield the Modernist vocabulary in some of his projects, many of my contemporaries consider his work a bit retrograde and cite his commercial success as proof of his disinterest in forging new paths in design theory (this is a common irony inherent within the architect subculture). With a staff of more than three hundred people, it is clear he is no "boutique" architect that offers a specialized solution, but he does manage to provide a high quality design, revealing a respectable academic rigor that enhances what can easily become a lazy historicist pastiche.

Such sober characteristics not only shed light on the overall look the future library but it also reveals a little bit the president's own self regard in the urban realm. In recent decades, presidential libraries have become the contemporary version of an emperor's triumphal arch, a monument to a major leader and a repository of all that leader's accomplishments while in office. Only a few have taken noticeably monumental character, in particular John F Kennedy's by I.M. Pei, Lyndon B. Johnson's by SOM and Bill Clinton's by Polshek & Partners. The LBJ library at the University of Texas at Austin impacts significantly the surrounding cityscape. The overall footprint of the library and the attached school of public administration occupies a sizeable area at the corner of the campus. Clinton's library in Little Rock makes a bold gesture in Little Rock, Arkansas, puncturing the city's waterfront with a cantlivering shiny and sleek box of glass and steel. It's apparent that the Clinton library was intended to become a unique landmark to the city and a focal point of local regeneration of the surrounding neighborhood. But because of its bold character, I can't help but think that somehow Mr. Clinton wants as much attention drawn to himself as possible.

President Bush seems to have made it clear that in trying to complement the existing campus architecture of SMU, his library will probably appear inconspicuous. It will refuse to dominate its surroundings with the contrived visual rupture common in much contemporary civic architecture, and instead will likely opt for a relatively modest facade and a gently monumental scale. Although the library will bel nestled within a campus, its edge location near a regenerating district north of downtown Dallas will engage the urban fabric of the city, drawing parallels with Clinton's library. I suspect that the selection of SMU as the library's location had much to do with the library's potential as an urban catalyst, since the president may have learned from his father's missed opportunity in situating his library on the remote and rural Texas A&M campus in College Station. The Bush library will be an attraction among many in Dallas, not THE attraction had it been located in Waco, Midland, or in Irving, a Dallas suburb. It will strengthen the connection between SMU and the city at large by complementing its impressive Meadows Art Museum, its only other major public draw. Since it is relatively small campus SMU will doubtlessly be affected greatly by the Bush Library, forever changing its somewhat insular character and forcing it to become more open to to the public.

With such ideas in mind, maybe the anticipated classicism that Stern effectively provides is the appropriate tact in such sensitive project. It will lend the library a dignified presence, temper the transition between the larger post-industrial city and the quiet neo-georgian college campus by not punctuated end in itself, which is often the ultimate result in large Modernist civic buildings. It follows, then, that George W. Bush has not intent to make the building a special monument to his personality either. Rather, as Mr. Stern has suggested, the architecture will serve as subdued backdrop to what the ideas and themes the President has championed during the last eight years:

"The president, if he were here, he'd say, 'Eventually people will not be so interested in George W. Bush but they will be interested in the ideas, the forums and debates and things that can occur,' " Mr. Stern said. "So I think he and I are on the absolute same wavelength in that respect."

It seems the president would rather emphasize library's diverse program, which include archives, a learning center and a think-tank, rather than merely generate a uniquely moving impression of grandeur and power. It's quite consistent with aspects of his ranch in Crawford, and says quite a lot about his self-deprecating personality.

The Lives of Others: Why a Movie About Communism Still Matters

Spoiler alert: While I tried very hard to not give the plot away, you may want to view the movie first before reading these thoughts.

Having heard nothing but rave reviews for The Lives of Others, I was delighted that NetFlix managed to get it into my home the day of its release, last Tuesday. Set in mid-1980s East Berlin, it is the story of a playwright who must decide what to do with his art, and the secret police who are trying to decide if he is a threat. The story focuses on one particularly devout member of the secret service, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, played with great restraint by Ulrich Mühe, who sadly died last month of stomach cancer. Wiesler is known as one of the greatest interrogators available to East Germany, such is his skill at getting confessions, we presume mostly from innocent people. Still, I was struck as to why this movie would have much relevance. Hadn’t the Berlin Wall fallen? Hadn’t most of the world come to rid of Communism? What benefit would follow this film, especially in the West?

Well, besides the fact that there remain many state sympathizers and out-and-out communists, even in Berlin, the movie works on a more complex personal level. Ultimately, it is about moral choices the characters are faced with. The background of a state-controlled society certainly serves to make their choices and consequences to follow more pronounced, and often puts the characters in irresolvable moral dilemmas. But the characters are endearing because of their potential for change, and they’re interesting because of their potential for evil. Wiesler, the spy who must decide if his personal liking for the author he is spying on will infringe on his job performance, is in a conundrum where he must decide if he will be true to himself or true to the state, no small decision in Eastern Germany. The author’s live-in girlfriend must decide if she will confess to the state police what she knows, or risk losing her high-profile acting career. It was with (perhaps) morbid fascination that I watched them struggle to make these decisions, knowing the no-win positions their moral courage, or lack thereof, has put them in.

But for those who are still convinced state-run societies are our best option, the movie explores the subtle ways obedience to the state is all-encompassing. To make a joke about your superiors is to risk severe consequences. For a woman to resist the advances of a party official could be career suicide. For an author to write anything that hints of disloyalty risks a loss to all privacy, and certainly his art. Yet the image we often get of Communism is less subtle, and probably, in that sense, less helpful. I often think, and rightfully so, of the Gulags in Siberia, of deserted farms in the Soviet Union, of mass murder, or the sheer brutality of Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mau. The Lives of Others explores the way socialism in the west was mentally brutal, emotionally brutal, spiritually brutal far before it is ever physically brutal. It explores the way it forces people to turn on each other, to perform inhumanely selfish acts, the very acts Communism was supposed to rid society of. In fact, if nothing else, the movie should make clear that a socialist state encourages more greed, more hunger for power, and less cooperation than any free and virtuous society.

Much of its message transcends its era. In a society devoid of choices, a man makes a choice that goes against his training, against his profession, against his previous loyalty. And it is a powerful thing watching him make this choice, and quite a sympathetic moment. To watch his character evolve to the point where he understands right and wrong, on his own terms, shaped by his own value system, is to be reminded that our freedom of choice is not to be taken for granted. Communism, more than economic control even, is about killing the ability to think for oneself, to enact groupthink on a mass scale. Money, or the market, is merely the conduit by which we express our free thoughts; the GDR seemed hell-bent on never letting those thoughts occur.

A final thought on rebellion. The movie’s hero is an artist, an artist who must decide if he will, like his friends and mentor, use his art to speak against the inhumanity in his country. As I compared his moral struggle with artists of today, I had to wonder why it is that artists so often call rebellion art. Certainly, I was sympathetic to his cause, as he would use his art not to navel-gaze and advertise his personal philosophy, but instead show the devaluing nature of his state. But many of today’s artists strike me as rebelling against all the wrong things. And I am not merely overreacting to Piss Christ…I am talking about most of the modern art I see in film, music, or museums. What is “popular”, at least from what I have seen, is rarely a defense of virtue, of nobility, of honor. It is much more about deconstruction, about “speaking truth to power”, and championing Post-modern cynicism. It was immensely rewarding for me not only to cheer on the artist who made this film and brought new awareness to the dangers of Statism, but also its hero, who is an artist who takes his art beyond himself, a rarity in his profession.

Charitable Choice: Should We Help Via the Marketplace or Via the Church?

Someone came to me with an interesting proposal recently: for my church to sponsor an African native in the U.S. while he gets Information Technology training for two years. The man whose idea this is has a great heart and a mature understanding of charity, so I listened carefully. There are several unique pieces to this proposal. First, we would sponsor someone who is a Christian, but not someone who is officially engaged in the life of the church in Sierra Leone, where he’s from. In other words, he’s not a seminarian, missionary or pastor. Second, that we would not only give some money to help someone in need, but we would full-scale sponsor a person with only the hope that he would proclaim the gospel in Africa through his business. And this is no small proposal; the total would be at least $50,000 for the two-year program.

What makes the proposal even more risky is that we would be sponsoring someone to get Information Technology training, only to go back to a country that has minimal infrastructure for such a position. That he could get employment is no guarantee; in fact, we might need to rely on his entrepreneurship skills to start a business rather than work for someone else. But we are trying to look beyond that, to see what could take place in Sierra Leone in the years to come, and to consider the role technology will have there. I have to admit, it is a bit of a daring proposal, but it comes as frustration mounts with bad charity, government aid that seldom seems to help, and seeing our brothers and sisters suffer while we know there is more we could do.

It should be noted that a majority of charitable propositions related to Africa seem to revolve around a few cornerstones: its people are poor so they need money, they are hungry so they need food, they are thirsty so they need water. Most of which is true, and some charities have become more innovative to provide lasting solutions, like digging water wells instead of shipping food, or donating money for an entire calf instead of a little money that gets spread around to varying food distribution charities. This way, the food and water are self-perpetuating, and the building blocks are there for ensuring health.

Still, perhaps the most popular “charity” to emerge for Africa is Bread for the World, through the One Campaign. (one.org) I’ve written more about them here. Essentially, this is less of a charity and more of a lobby, an effort to redistribute American wealth to a country that has very little. The fact that we have been doing this for decades and the problems still persist there seem to phase them not even a little. Worse, I find this star-studded approach (their website chronicles the many celebrities who champion the cause) to charity pandering and un-thoughtful. Apparently none of these celebrities (who quite probably did not finish high school) bother to consider if their proposal would actually work. Perhaps helping with such causes helps them assuage some guilt.

So let me iterate again how unusual the proposal I’m considering is compared to so many others I’ve seen. This charity would full-scale (instead of piecemeal) sponsor someone who will spend the majority of his employment in the marketplace. The church would have no way of ensuring a good “return on investment”; we would only trust he would be a faithful witness after he has received his training here, mostly on our dime. But the more I thought about it, the more biblical the proposal was. Consider these biblical figures who only spent part of their lives with their ministry: Jesus, Paul, Peter, and pretty much every disciple who ever had a day job. In fact, few Biblical characters were full-time prophets or spiritual leaders, including Abraham, Moses, Luke (he was a physician). It is true that the major prophets like Elijah, Elisha and John the Baptist seemed not to have day jobs, but to spread the gospel without it being a full-time occupation is an entirely biblical principle.

The basic problem is the same temptation towards big government; it is easier to trust a large, anonymous institution than to take the risk of personal involvement. It would be easier for my church to write a check. It would be easier to trust another institution whose heart seems to be in the right place. But that doesn’t seem like enough anymore. In my economic philosophy, I trust the marketplace. Why not with regards to evangelism as well?

Recommended for Further Reading...

Below are a few links that may interest you:

• Like many other people, I believe that how the young are educated determines how societies adapt to future challenges that will play a part in daily life. My own life-long experience attending public schools in below-average districts contributes much to my skepticism to standard solutions in improving our education system. However, I refrain from prescribing reforms since I've never known what it's like to be a teacher in these mediocre schools. One blogger who is very close to me, "Scott Walker", has made a commitment to become a teacher in the large and mismanaged Dallas Independent School District. Walker is fresh out of college and naturally full of ambition, and has an exceptional mastery of the humanities and literature of the great Western cannon. Walker has numerous stories to tell from his days working as a substitute teacher at all grade levels around various public school districts in the area. His blog"The English Teacher" features keen insights complemented by a highly literate writing style. It's definitely worth a gander.
• One of the joys of writing about architecture on a blog is the connection made with other young designers who understand the blog as useful promotional medium for their work. "Emiliano", a seemingly talented Italian architect, shows off one of his projects. I cannot completely understand Italian, but the images of his cultural center in Brescia reveals a sophisticated understanding of structural and cladding systems. There are thousands of young talents like Emiliano, so don't hesitate to remind me to link to your blog to promote your projects.
• Want to find out what a self-described anarcho-syndicalist structural engineer thinks of Le Corbusier? It's a new blog full of opinions on everything, from a solidly left perspective. What has life been like After Corbu?
• As a catholic, I have some major reservations on the effects that the second Vatican council had on the Church. Dr. Philip Blosser writes from a similar perspective in his blog, "The Pertinacious Papist", a superbly written site on all things catholic. For those you who are annoyed by much of the post-Vatican 2 repertoir of worshisp music, browse this particular post if you are familiar with some of the listed songs.
• Apeman wrote a thoughtful response to my observations while traveling to Mexico City a few months back. To answer his main question: the blog's name "Architecture and Morality" is not really a literal description of the content of the blog posts on this site. Rather, for those who have searched the blog's title on the internet, the title comes from an album recorded in 1981 by the English synth-pop group OMD. As soon as I was considering establishing a blog, that album title seemed to perfectly encapsulate the nebulous intentions of what I wanted to write about. Sure I would want to write about architecture, but I am also interested in thinking about other broader but related topics that most architecture writers would never care to tie in. It's kind of a coincidence that my co-blogger and I tend to write on our areas of expertise, he on religion and morality and me on architecture. Other than that, I have no intention to produce content consistent to the blog's namesake. With that being said, Ape Man makes some interesting points about how architecture can reflect a society's moral values.
• I don't know if Andrew Yen is still writing, but his short-lived blog, "The Suburban Bourgeois" contains some nice litte posts about life in the suburbs and skepticism about the advantages of a more dense and 'urban' lifestyle promoted by the architecture and planning orthodoxy. I admire the fact that he writes from the perspective of a non-expert on matters of urbanism, and refuses to defer his opinion to so-called "experts".

The Panopticon of Celebrity: The Image of the City in the Age of Luxury Condominium Towers

At some point in my theoretical education in architecture school the French philosopher Michel Foucault's ideas were introduced. One of the concepts that I learned was about Michel Foucault's description of the Panopticon. From my brief exposure to Foucault's philosophy, it seemed to have centered significantly around power relationships. All forms of cultural expression were subtle manifestations of power of an elite group of people and ideas over everything else. As an example, the language with which we speak is structured in such a way as to assume particular notions of hierarchy and influence that favored a point of view, particular a patriarchal and rationalist one. Many of today's academics apply Foucault's kernel of ideas in order to give meaning to their deconstructive pursuits. By supposedly revealing the inherent bias in power in all that we communicate and even think, it becomes possible to cast doubt on any knowledge we've inherited. This logic has been a driving force in dismantling the influence of centuries of accumulated wisdom, from the Judeo-Christian tradition all the way past the enlightenment up to post-structuralism.

My opinion is that Foucault's ideas have had a destructive impact, canceling many times over any gains in the freedom to rethink knowledge on a different set of power relationships. His separation of truth from knowledge ironically did not lead him to doubt the integrity of all ideas. In fact, Foucault was an avowed Marxist, and many of those influenced by him have used his ideas to reinstate socialist ideology as the base of power for a new body of knowledge (which accounts for much of what passes as scholarship in the humanities these days.)

One of his more architectural concepts was that of the Panopticon, an opaque tower at the center of a circular array of prison cells from which the prison guard can watch the inmates without being seen. This image of a prison represented the broader realization of a pervasive yet unseen power that governs much of daily life, where one will not transgress because of a fear that we are being secretly watched. It is ironic that Foucault wrote about the Panopticon as a way of defending the rights of the imprisoned and the insane but was personally in favor of a political system (socialist tyranny) that used it with brutal efficiency. I was interested in the idea that power over others could be polar, in which one person or thing could command the attention of all those around it. The Panopticon is not only a means of exercising oppressive power but also one of attracting attention in order to exert influence. In an age where much of what we call "news" consists of reporting the whereabouts of an unaccomplished celebrity, the public at large sometimes is compelled to lend its focus on people who by what they are subtly influence what is important in the world.

The emergence of celebrity is relatively recent, the product of mass media that needed to provide images that captivated and stimulated many people to imagine another imaginary world in vivid detail. Whereas not too long ago, a celebrity would express regret of having their privacy invaded, now we can find ambitious individuals aggressively seek as much attention as possible and willingly expose all aspects of their life simply to become the center of a celebrity-based panopticon. Reality television is nothing more than an attempt by talentless people seeking to wield the power of celebrity for their own personal gain. It seems to be the aspiration of more an more people to be seen or at least to celebrate ourselves publicly, often by showing off their possessions. Conspicuous consumption represents a natural human impulse to attract attention through the ownership of special objects from a wide range of scales, from fashionable clothes, cars, private planes and ultimately private buildings. Flaunting one's personal trophies is nothing new, but the way it can become so unavoidably visible to so many is.

From the earliest of times, buildings have probably been the most effective way to wield a "panoptical" power over others due to the way that they permanently occupy and dominate a landscape. Monarchs often would situate their palaces on visually prominent sites while wealthy and politically influential families built their sprawling family compound in the middle of the town to remind subjects or average citizens who was in control. With the rise of large-scale commerce, especially beginning from the Industrial revolution onwards, wealthy tycoons would build that most visible and most literal of panopticons, the high-rise office tower. In the capitalist city, business enterprises become a king of sorts, employing many people within the community, brokering deals with city leaders and lobbying with national politicians. Despite some popular paranoid perceptions, corporations are not watching individuals from their opaque glass towers. Instead, they sear into the memories of citizens a constructed communal identity of which the corporation is a primary element. How many Detroit residents could imagine their city without their monument to their dominant Automobile companies, the Renaissance center? In my home city, where many of its citizens lament the lack of a traditional communal life, could never imagine itself with the seventy-two story Bank of America tower. The unspoken message given by these gleaming towers is: You fellow citizens should not attempt to push any policy that would harm the interests of our business, since the community as you know it would cease to exist without us being part of your cherished urban landscape.

The past couple of decades have seen a change to this commercially-based panopticon. After the real-estate bust that followed the overbuilding of downtown commercial office buildings throughout many cities in the U.S during the 1980s, many large companies decided it wasn't necessary to locate at the center of a big city in a vertically hierarchical tower. They preferred to build more horizontal corporate campuses on cheap land in the suburbs. Efficiency gains from computers and networks shrank the size of corporate staff dramatically, leaving vacant many floors of space that once was alloted to an extensive administrative bureaucracy once required by large companies. Corporate tenants come and go in these office towers, with most citizens unaware of who occupies them at the moment, just that some sort of business is going in there. Municipal governments value the presence of a major corporation in forging a distinct communal identity for the city, and therefore they continue to offer enticements to companies to move downtown with generous tax rebates.

Such incentives indicate a desperation to stall the shift away from commerce occupying the role as the icon of authority in a cityscape. Beginning in the 1990s and expanding rapidly in our current decade, construction residential towers have become the most prominent urban event taking place in our downtowns. Vacant office buildings are rapidly being converted into residential units, and city skylines are being changed by new towers with smaller floorplates and highly articulated walls punched by private widows and balconies. They avoid monotonous glass curtain facades and lobbies engulfing entire city blocks. Many of these towers are surrounded by more pedestrian low-rise mixed use buildings with ground level retail. These residential highrises almost exclusively house the city's elite, and cater the natural desire to enjoy dramatic views of the surrounding city. The structures also accomplish for those who dwell in them a sense of importance shared with monarchs and wealthy families of long ago: a reminder who is important, who stands above the rest of average society.

And yet there are differences from that earlier time help explain the particular nature of panoptical power in our time. The most obvious is that this power is much more democratically distributed. Instead of one large palace for one family, there are now hundreds of luxury units attached to a tall vertical structure for all to be reminded who's important. Another difference is that today's mini-palaces in the sky are not literal political symbols like their ancient predessors. Whereas political leaders used their grand residence as a projection of their power over others, luxury condo towers serve as monuments to the occupants' apparent success and their association with an elite leisure class. Many among us aspire to become part of that leisure class due to their seemingly boundless sense of freedom and financial security. Yet the lifestyle of leisured elites resembles that of celebrities, who seem to make news simply by attending some leisurely event like movie premiers, awards shows and parties.

Buying property to upgrade one's social status happens frequently at the private level. But the times we live in are quite unique in that climbing for personal prestige is becoming our most significant built legacy. Only a few weeks ago, it was declared that tallest building in the world is now in Dubai. The 160 story tower contains mostly condominium units and an Armani brand hotel. In Chicago, there are plans to build an extremely tall spire on the most prominant waterfront site in the city, containg luxurious condominiums spiralling to the top. Currently the first ninety-plus story building in decades is underway under the Trump brand on the Chicago river, featuring condos and hotel sharing personal concierge services. Flying over Miami recently, speculative condo towers seem to have be growing like weeds, utterly changing the landscape of that city forever. The magazines on the airplanes were full of ads promoting spectacular towers in a place that not too long ago was briefly occupied American troops-Panama.

What particularly made me realize the significance of the rise of the residential tower in cities was when it was announced not too long ago that the first major addition to my home city's skyline would be a forty-two story condominium tower in the Dallas Arts district. The units in the tower are selling for no lower than a million dollars each. A stone's throw away, the most significant downtown development since the 1980s is going up. Called "Victory", it consists of a series of condo-hotels and upscale retail catering specifically to the leisured elite. The project's "cherry on top" could be represented by the private helipad roof sitting atop the tallest unit above the W hotel, belonging to none other than the Victory primary developer himself.

What does this say about the contemporary big city? The rise of corporate commercial towers often conveyed the general economic prosperity of the city, giving it regional and national prestige. A newcomer arriving to a major city would view the skyline on the horizon and say to himself "this is where important business is conducted...this a city on the move!" As condo skyscrapers begin to dominate the skyline of important cities, can one necessarily say the same thing? My first impression upon seeing these new skylines would be that there are a lot of wealthy people who live there that want to enjoy views. They say little of that city's overall economic health, or what life might be like for the majority of people who can't afford to live in these vertical mini-palaces. Gleaming downtown office towers connote opportunities for work and advancement. Glitzy condo towers symbolize the opportunities already taken, a city reserved for those who have already made it. They do not produce marketable commodities and ideas like their commercial counterparts, but merely display the byproduct of those successful producers themselves in a memorable and highly monumental form (the high-rise). One critic of the condo boom in American cities notes that many of those who own units in these towers are not even residents of the city in which they are located. Like the office towers that preceded them, many of the towers are pure speculation, built to no compelling overall civic need.

Imagining how future urban historians will regard the developments at the turn-of-the millennium American city (and a few international centers like Dubai), it seems to me evident that the story will involve the rise of luxurious high-density living anchoring the revival of old downtowns as well as the establishment of new satellite city centers. As the nineeteenth century turned into the twentieth, the story of American cities was their exuberant commercial growth, the development of the high-rise as a response to speculation as well as the creation of a new class of workers--the office worker. New architectural vocabularies (Gothic revival, art deco, Chicago style) responded to the overwhelming drive to build vertically in order to accomodate an army of office workers helping produce the massive quanities of goods and services for the industrial age. Nowadays the need for towers comes from a fast-growing upper class benefitting from the opportunities made possible by the post-industrial information age. Business has opted for low-rise suburban campuses or spec-office parks while the new rich's growing desire to show off becomes one of the only remaining reasons to build higher and higher.

A Right to the Land: Who Has it, and Why

My mom recalled an interesting airport conversation to me recently. Held over in Dallas, she was making small talk with a woman from Oklahoma when she mentioned she was from Louisiana. This naturally led the conversation to discussing Katrina, its aftershock, what should be done to rebuild the city, etc. My mom is of the opinion that it is rather non-sensical to try to recreate New Orleans just as it was, i.e., put people back in harm’s way. After all, the city is still sinking, the levies can hardly be trusted, and the Mississippi River is still washing away valuable sediment it had deposited for centuries during flood season before the Corps of Engineers put in dams. But this opinion was met with a rather harsh rebuttal. The claim from the conversation partner was that those who were displaced had a right to the land, that the 9th ward, for example, should be rebuilt as it was, and those who had moved out should be moved back in.

Undoubtedly these are the two poles that encompass the thinking about rebuilding New Orleans. This has brought up several philosophical questions for me. Who has a right to any land? How did they get such a right? Are there times in which cultural forces trump traditional understandings of private property, land allocation, etc.? My view tends to be that if New Orleans is to be rebuilt, several things need to happen first.
1. The coast needs to be replenished with soil; let the Mississippi naturally flood the region to provide some barrier for future hurricanes. Yes, this will take many decades, but the sooner we start, the better.
2. Get rid of incentives that encourage systemic poverty and reliance on government bailouts. We saw what happens when passive reliance on government meets inept and uncaring government agencies.
3. Be corporate friendly. Louisiana notoriously has an out-migration problem and only 1 Fortune 500 company in the state. Follow the lead of other southern cities and become manufacturing/technologically friendly. There are loads of auto-manufacturers along I-20 and Austin has become a mini-Silicon Valley. New Orleans has decided to rely on its history and sleaziness alone for tourism dollars. It’s time to be forward thinking and let the great historical/cultural background be just that, the background.

So what to do with all the displaced? Don’t they have a right to return home? The argument heard by my mom was as follows: Because most of the folks in the 9th ward were displaced to begin with (brought from Africa as slaves), they deserved to be resettled (at government expense) to the land that was taken from them. There was no property claims as such, as much as cultural pleas. Because cultural ties to the land were all these people had (their music, food and community) they had the right, even a moral foundation for resettling the land.

But who is to say anyone had a right to that land, even if their culture was alive and well there? While no one enjoys being displaced, what exactly in the course of history tells us that any ethnic group has a right to any land? With the rare exception of the Jews (who, according to scripture, were promised land by God, and historically did, in fact, settle the land, through conquest or slow agricultural/social hegemony), I can think of virtually no clan of people who didn’t move, or weren’t threatened with the prospect of moving because of natural/military forces. Even Native Americans, whose suffering was real and well-documented, were overcome, rightly or wrongly, by superior military forces, disease and political deception. But as wrong as this was, we would be remiss if we thought of it as new in the history of human colonization. It’s as old as the land itself. So whereas the Jews seem to have an unusual claim on the Land, especially post-WWII, I can think of no other group that has such protection.

Our only real claim to land then is as individuals, and it is only protected in the historically rare combination of effective rule of law and the protection of private property. I haven’t written an article in many weeks because I have been in the middle of move. My wife and I purchased our first home, and I have to say, cliché as it may be, I’ve never loved America so much. The idea that financial institutions were competing to help me own a piece of the world that basically no one can take from me was surreal. I hope I never take the ability to own private property for granted. (Of course I know that these financial institutions will make a mint off of me, but hey, it’s a tax write-off, and they’re taking an enormous risk giving me a lot of money.)

And ultimately, I think this has instructed me on what to think of re-building New Orleans. Let the market decide if it is worth re-building, not faux moral imperatives that dictate past residents there have the right to resettle there. Businesses and corporations are in better places to discern if New Orleans will be profitable city with a high standard of living because they stand to profit from it. The land shouldn’t be re-settled by past inhabitants just to try to “make things right.” It might make us feel good, but there is not necessarily a moral imperative to do so, and if it is economically infeasible, why make the same mistake twice?

For a wonderfully comprehensive take on the rebuilding of New Orleans, go here.

Helpless Hands: From Arts and Crafts to Blobitechture

Organic Baby Farm's Wacky Hermit follows up on a discussion by Glenn Reynolds about the lack of basic hand-skills among younger adults. Hermit blames the rise of foreign trade, which have made cheap goods so widely available that many skills that substituted the need to buy new replacement have lost their value in saving money. Hermit provides a good example of this change:

Myself, I have the ability to make over a dress, taking it apart down to its component parts and re-making it into a different dress. Back when dresses were not cheap, this was a valuable skill. Not so much anymore, when you can go down to the dollar store and buy spangly knit things off the rack. Who would pay me a couple hundred dollars to make over a dress, when for half that they could have a new one?

I think Hermit has correctly pointed to only a small aspect to a larger historical process of growing mechanization, mass production and urbanization. The growing loss of hand-skills is not entirely new, but rather a development that has been accelerating since the introduction of machinery since the beginning of the Industrial revolution almost two centuries ago. Factories opened allowing many people to leave subsistence farming, a lifestyle that required a tremendous amount of hand skills, for one where knowledge of operating machinery involved mindless repetitive tasks. As the forward march of technological innovation has spawned the current post-industrial era where factory workers have been forced out of a manufacturing dependent livelihood into one of information-dependent service jobs. Cheap goods made available by mass production have given way to days spent typing on keyboards and clicking on mouse buttons managing an amazingly complex yet abstract tool called software. Each major change further away from a life where one had to make much of what one needed has led to succeeding generations defining themselves more as consumers rather than makers of things.

Although Wacky Hermit and Glenn Reynolds refer more to young people's inability to do simple repair and construction, the loss of hand-craftsmanship goes along with this. One of the hardest hit victims of the industrial revolution were those who lived on crafting carefully by hand objects of daily use. Who needed or could afford a craftsman to produce a one-of-a-kind chair or table with fine details when a manufactured alternative was available at much lower price? This problem inspired the Arts and Crafts movement, which emerged during the latter half of the nineteenth century as an effort to reorient creative energies to craft traditions that were rapidly being lost by industrialization. Brits such as C.F. Voysey, Charles Rennie MacIntosh and William Morris and Edwin Lutyens along with some German luminaries followed principles that countered "soul-less" machines by embracing autenticity particular to the way a craftsman directly shapes forms from raw materials. Detailing was crucial to this approach to design, as it allowed individually authenticity to shine, contrasting it with the monotony and lack of attention inherent in mass manufacturing. Many of these designers were critical of the division of labor, preferring a master craftsman to design every single part of a structure, from exteriors, to interior trim, all fixtures and even free-standing furniture (the total work of art-gesamtkunstwerk). In contrast to simply drafting shop drawings and handing it over to a manufacturer or contractor to finish, an Arts and Crafts designer would oversee the entire process and would partake in the execution of every little detail. This was no doubt an exhaustive way to practice but it inarguably produced some of the most original and the highest quality works of any period. Its influence cannot be understated, as even the machine-worshipping Bauhaus school began with arts and crafts curriculum at its founding after the first World War.

Though many of the buildings, textiles, furniture and decorative metal work from the Arts and Crafts movement were popular, it was obviously not very efficient and very unaffordable compared to rapidly improving mass-production processes. It was a fruitfully innovative time for designers, but the sophisticated hand-skills the movement championed were simply uneconomical, so much so that subsequent designers who were imbued in the arts and crafts tradition adapted to the new rules brought about by the machine. Modernist heroes such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and yes, even Le Corbusier were trained thoroughly in the Arts and Crafts style. For them, the movement offered them a means to reimagine new forms for modern times, detached from the classicism that represented older, and in their minds, irrelevant times. Wright's Prairie style was mostly an evolution of the 19th century craftsman style, Gropius helped design an elegant German style arts and crafts house in Berlin as one the first Bauhaus school projects and a very young Le Corbusier was trying to synthesize an arts-and-crafts/art nouveau architecture for his Swiss hometown. As many in their generation gradually embraced industrial processes, their arts and crafts experience would inform their poetic understanding of detail and their sensitivity to materials and color. These masters' timesless furniture designs are a testament to the careful yet expressionistic tendencies that characterize the arts and crafts movement.

As hand skills in the making of objects have given way to machine precision, new skills in understanding the manufacturing processes are essential to creating any object in high detail. While no longer able to properly handle saws, chisel, or even lay masonry, modern designers have developed an enlarged understanding of a plethora materials technologies that did not exist a century ago. The computer has only intensified the pressure on designers to be containers of information, so much as to devalue that last basic hand skill - drawing. To the surprise of most outside the design professions, it is no longer necesssary to demonstrate technical proficiency in drawing, nor has it ever been since advent of the Modernist curriculum in design schools beginning in the 1940s. The Beaux Arts curriculum which emphasized a mastery in drawing and water color rendering would be replaced by a Bauhaus-inspired attention to concepts , abstraction and the thought process in design. A hand-skill for building quick cardboard models to follow the progression of an idea took precedence, only to be succeeded by 3 dimensional computer models in the last decade. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I predict the ability carefully manipulate an exacto knives, Dremel power tools, acetate sheets and wood will decline and become an outsourced specialty. When thinking about my daily routine at my architecture job, it makes no sense to wield my abilities as a master manual draftsman, a technically flawless renderer or a detailed model maker, when what is truly needed is my expertise in manipulating computer software as well as making problem-solving design decisions. Since it is enough work for people like me to apply my technical and theoretical knowledge to the daily avalanche of client and consultant demands, it makes more economic sense and is a better use of every one's time and talents to outsource hand-skill specialities like rendering and model-making to outside entities, often in places in China and India, where high-quality craftsmanship and technical ability are cheaper.

All these rapid changes in the design professions do not excuse a willful ignorance of some useful hand skills. Drawing skills are a valuable tool in exploring design ideas and concepts and are an accessible way for students to understand how we humans perceive objects in space and light. Model-making skills allow designers to better understand the composition of space, structure, and immediately inform aspects of texture and light. Rendering skills such as charcoal drawing or water color not only force one to contemplate we perceive objects in its context, but engender an ability make abstractions of nature. Although I consider myself competent in all the above skills, I regret that my architectural education could not cultivate them further. It's even more depressing to think that the nature of my job allows no time for me to refine these classic skills, since it's more important to troubleshoot software glitches, write countless emails, and field questions from colleagues. Design, whether by drawing or model-building, requires a single-minded concentration that is the antithesis to the contemporary practice of multi-tasking. Hand skills would be nice, but only after all of the more "important" tasks have been completed.

We can moan the loss of these hand skills endlessly, but we should temper it with the awareness that new skills have emerged that have enhanced designers in unexpected ways. The technological savy of younger workers have allowed them to be more productive and absorb information much sooner. The fact that many recent architecture students have had to learn a large variety of software applications in the span of a few years before starting their first job makes them far more flexible and versatile in the workplace, drafting construction drawings one day, coloring rendered elevations the next, and preparing a walk-through animation the next. Even if older colleagues convincingly demonstrate their command of project management and client/consultant relations, their utter inability to learn sophisticated computer skills beyond writing email reminds me that it is experience, not their hand skills that keeps them in their pivileged position. New skills gained by young professionals open up to new ways at evaluting a problem, as well lead to innovative solutions. The complex geometries of today's "blobitechture" are realizable almost exclusively by the deft manipulation of modeling software that is common with younger architects.

Not all new skills acquired by the young are useful, and some activities that upcoming generations cause a regression in basic skills and knowledge. Some computer games will sharpen physical coordination between the eyes and hands, with a few enriching strategic thinking. Still, most of these computer games are a complete waste of time and prevent some kids from engaging their minds with the world around them. Many in this generation are highly dependent on current technology to maintain a sense of normalcy, making them very vulnerable when such technologies are unavailable. Hand-skills offer a connection to the real world, a world of matter and natural phenomena, a world created for our bodies and minds to relish in. Virtual reality is a mental construct and a product of sort focused isolation. As "hyperreal" as they often can be, it ends as soon as a hard drive is turned off.

Many architects will tell you that drawing by hand or cutting models is actually therapeutic. There is something comforting about the mind instantly directing the hand to express a three dimensional idea. Even the most intuitive computer program cannot compete with this immediacy, since it often functions as barrier between thought and execution. One often feels hostage to a computer's processing speed, its inexplicable bugs, or a program's restrictive parameters that wont let the user move an object in an obvious way. It's impossible for the computer to accurately catalogue the iterations an idea undergoes before it achieves a finished appearance, concealing the give-and-take, the accidents and the patterns that emerge in drawn sketches or sketch models. These basic hand-skills contain concepts in their barrest essence, which is likely why architectural monographs feature them to accompany built projects. They expose to the viewer the designer's train of thought, and also mark paths taken that may be revisited by the designer later on. Like an expository essay, these forms of sketches can make a complex idea comprehensible and can teach us to think from a different point of view. This increases our awareness of the real world around us, something the digital design procsess, in its isolated virtuality could never do.

Everyone’s a Grump: No One’s Happy When No One’s Leading

I was having a conversation with a faculty member of my (former) institution of higher learning, when I recognized a common theme. Knowing that I was a pretty conservative student at a pretty liberal institution, she recalled a story she thought would interest me. She told me that earlier in the semester, a group of conservative students talked to her about how they did not feel welcome. Conservative authors were seldom required reading, the students were always way outnumbered in class, and even the prayers in chapel felt more politically leftist than true to the tradition. A few days later, apparently unrelated, a group of liberal students talked to the same faculty member about how their views were also not welcome. Not enough was being done for GLBTQ students, there wasn’t enough emphasis on “social justice,” and so the complaints went. I suppose I am a bit naïve, but this story left me shaking my head. How could it be that at the same institution, two diametrically opposed ideologies were equally blighted?

This seems to be a pretty accurate metaphor for the rest of America. I keep asking myself how it is we have arrived at what seems to be a strange place in politics: everyone is pretty grumpy these days. Shouldn’t it be that if one side isn’t getting what they want from government (and/or culture), then the other side should be delighted? Yet, no one seems happy these days, and I have to wonder why. Is it because we have more conduits to exchange information, so both “sides” are better informed about their political parties shortcomings? This may explain why Joe Klein’s blog has been raked over the coals by angry leftists lately. Or is it because the absense of universal truth has left the majority of us without a central connector, and the transition has been very hard to make?

As much as anything, there is a fundamental leadership vacuum at most levels in America, which is certainly connected to a general acceptance of relativism. It certainly starts at the top with President Bush. Not only did he begin his presidency as a favorite target of the vitriolic left, he has mysteriously but steadily alienated his own party in proportions hard to imagine. Peggy Noonan said it best here, so I won’t repeat it. Suffice to say, he has shown marginal leadership in only one area, albeit a big one, the War on Terror/Terrorism/Terrorists, or whatever we are calling it these days. And even this successful leadership (over a war that alienated many of the libertarian conservative ranks) has proven to be as stubborn and myopic as aggressive and visionary.

And as a Christian, I am actually starting to question something I never thought I would, which is the detrimental impact Bush’s faith may have had on his presidency. Again, call me naïve, but I once considered Bush’s faith to be an asset to his leadership, but I have come to see it as more of a liability. His faith seems similarly stubborn and myopic, which comes across as more fundamentalist than faithful. And this isn’t to say he should abandon principles, but perhaps humility could have come more into play. I don’t know that he believes a war against Islamic forces is the will of God per se, but his faith has led him to a misguided optimism that Christianity doesn’t necessarily endorse. This is most clearly seen domestically.

His “anything goes” attitude (reflected in his zero-veto policy, and his endorsement of spending, federal education and now amnesty) seem to come from pseudo-optimism about human nature. Yes, Mr. President, human beings are capable of amazing good. And horrendous bad. His job as a conservative leader, which we now know he’s not, was to encourage the good by limiting government, not growing it, and discourage the bad by enforcing laws, not endorsing new ones that encourage illegal behavior, for example. In this regard, he has been a near total failure, and an enormous disappointment.

But all is not lost. If anything, Bush’s shortcomings could help a strong, articulate conservative candidate get into the White House. Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson seem to fit this bill pretty well, though they’re not perfect by any means. And these candidates will need all the help they can get; with 8 years of Bush and a Democrat-controlled Congress, it would be a rare historical event for a Republican to win. Third party, anyone?

Throwing Sego to the Trash Bin: rejecting French socialism for Monsieur Sarko

As a French national, I was allowed the opportunity to cast my vote for President de la Republique. French expatriates and others like myself reported to the Dallas International School, an elegant Gary Cunningham-designed private campus founded by French corporate executives to educate their children (Alcatel telecom and Accor hotels have a big presence here), to cast our ballots. It was quite unlike voting in an American election, where one fills in a scan-tron sheet full of numerous items with a pencil. Rather, voting for the French president consisted of taking two slips of paper, each with one of the candidates' name on it, then going behind a standing booth. The act of voting was completed by throwing away the slip of paper of the candidate you did not want into the waste-paper basket below the booth, and inserting the slip of your chosen candidate into an envelope. Finally I walked over to a table with transparent box containing all of the completed ballots, dropped the envelope through the slit sealed by a special trap door (to probably prevent vote-tampering).

Although it felt awkward to me at first, I now believe that the act of throwing away one of the choices was an appropriately symbolic way of my desire to see France get rid of the old way of doing things in order to begin anew. For anybody who've read my previous postings, I naturally voted for the candidate who promised a much-needed change in direction, Nicolas Sarkozy. I've followed his rise through the French political ranks, and I was impressed by his verbal response to the recent riots in France. Watching him in his debate with his socialist rival Segolene Royal, I was comforted by his cool demeanor, his command of the facts and his embrace of pro-growth economic policies. Beyond this, I appreciate the fact that he did not come from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) the elite school that has traditionally groomed the French political elite for the last few generations. It produced a constant stream of technocrats and unaccountable leaders unable to re-think the problems plaguing France.

I've waited for a little time to pass before making any judgement on whether Sarkozy was for real. With the appointment of an untraditional foreign minister and his plan to revamp France's mediocre university system, it seems that some form of change is on the way. My wish for my birth country isn't that it becomes more American, but rather that becomes strong and confident. France has all the prerequesites to becoming economically and culturally dynamic, magnanimous and cooperative in its foreign policy. It can also distinguish itself as a Western European country that can remake itself for a new era and challenges, feigning traditional answers to lagging problems and instead trying out new ideas from the ground up. France could show the way in dealing practically about Europe's alienated Muslim population, standing up for the primacy of its culture over the relativist currents that infect mentality of many on the continent.

Most importantly, from the perspective of this Franco-American, I hope for a France that grows out of its debilitating anti-Americanism. More than simply wishing for a greater diplomatic rapprochement between France and the U.S., I'm hoping that daily conversations and news articles among the French will not be consumed by an anti-American point of view. It's allright to maintain an identity of independence from the U.S. with defining it as anything opposite of American identity. Anti-americanism is an ideology in that it takes very narrow assumptions about what Americans are and builds from them a coherent set of ideas that permits a narrow kind of thinking. Like any ideology, it limits one's ability to generate new ways of solving problems, since narrow assumptions are inadequate to think realistically about the causes of problems. Regardless how much we'd like to believe that Americans only want to spread the rapacious forces of market capitalism, secure single-mindedly all of the world's natural resources for itself and infect the globe with decadent pop culture, these kind of assumptions fail spectacularly in understanding our motives and fails even worse in predicting what Americans will do in the future.

Although anti-Americanism can be politically useful in the short term, overall it has always been unhelpful to those who succumb to it. It has never mad anybody wealthier, more productive, more independent nor has it led to any greater level cultivation. Complementing the adversarial foreign policy of the French against American interests during the last few decades has been a denial by many French citizens of real problems that would have been better addressed were they not to reflexively label anything untraditional as American. The common French journalistic practice of calling certain policies "Anglo-Saxon" deliberately narrows the ways the French define themselves, declaring that if it's been done in England or the U.S., it can never be done in France. To not be "Anglo-Saxon" makes "dirigiste" the default "French" policy for everything. Thus, Anti-Americanism and its anti-Anglo-Saxon variant only strengthens the bureaucratic and political elite of France, leaving all other classes of French people no better off. I can't emphasize enough how many times I would listen to my French relatives whine about the same problems that afflict their people, and each and every time would not even give ideas coming from American experience the time of day. The cultural identity of the French has become firmly entrenched in the socio-political tradition of the country, to the point that to be French is to also be a socialist. Somehow it is lost to many that in other times the French could monarchists, democratic totalitarians (French Revolution), Colonial Imperialists, and so on. Why isn't it just as French to be freedom-worshipping individualistic entrepreneurs?

That is my hope from a leader like Monsieur Sarkozy. I'm less interested that he is described as pro-American by some media outlets than that he's transcended the flippant critiques of Americans that have been a pastime of previous French presidents. He has the courage to tell the French people what they are not used to hearing from their leaders. And he is wise enough to realize than the balm of anti-americanism in France is an impediment to reclaiming and redefining what the French can be. If Sarkozy does disagree with the U.S. on certain policies, it is hoped that the merits of his arguments rely on more than opposition for opposition's sake. In terms of international alliances I'm hoping that he'll associate with a better set than Islamist dicatorships, shady African genocidal regimes, and other Third World countries too feeble to break free from France's current neo-colonialist policies. If he makes such changes France will have a firmer standing in opining on affairs affecting the world at large.

Contrary to what many Frenchmen may believe about people like me, we do not wish for France to become another American drone or "poodle". We wish only that it act reasonably on all issues from a position of confidence, not craven fecklessness. A sensible, robust, prosperous and confident France will make the job of maintaining international order that much easier on all nations, especially on the U.S. Maybe I'm expecting too much from Sarko, but the act of throwing away the ballot for Segolene Royal at the booth reminded me that eliminating the accumulation of socialist stasis on my birth country was an available choice for me this time.

Lessons from Mexico: Cities and Social Trust

Not too long ago I made a short trip to the most populated city I have ever visited. Judging from its relatively small airport and its lack of a concentrated cluster of tall towers, it was not evident that I was among the twenty million or so inhabitants living in Mexico City. It was unquestionnably much more dense than my home base of Dallas, with almost every block being no lower than 3 stories in height. The highways, themselves relatively small considering the amount of traffic that rides on them, rarely elevated over the city. They felt more like high-speed urban boulevards, with short ramps, narrow lanes, ground level views of the surrounding buildings.

At first impression, Mexico City feels more like a low-rise European city than anything else, except for a smattering of corporate towers dotting the broad valley landscape. Monumental avenues criss-cross the city, intersecting at roundabouts featuring statues and ornamental fountains. The city's 19th century planners evidently applied Baron Haussman's techniques to lend the city international respectability and cultural prestige (similar to other great Latin American capitals such as Buenos Aires). Such a planning tendency is logical considering the city's Spanish colonial influence, in which city's were founded by a main plaza with a church on one side, a government palace on another, and a grid of streets for residential and small commerce. The city has grown exponentially since its founding days, and despite planning moves to visually unify such a sprawling and fast-changing city, Mexico City is at best a chaotic patchwork different neighborhoods, social classes, and varying qualities of construction.

I say this from the narrow point of view of staying and doing business in the city's wealthier western districts. With its leafy paseos in between busy automobile right of ways, its four to five story buildings framing each avenue as well as its breezy semi-private courtyards tucked away from the street, memories of European cities were triggered in my mind. Upon closer observation , I was reminded why this part of Mexico City was quite unlike the European cities it aspires to, as it gives off the impression that much of it is a disorganized jumble. Since I myself am a fan of the unexpected beauty of such urban jumbles, I was trying to figure out why such a highly regarded area of the city left me unsettled in my appreciation.

My Frenchness affects me at a subliminal level, in particular in the way I perceive order and beauty. I often have to temper my oh-so-French tendencies to create austere monumental volumes and spaces with a more English kind of spontaneity and randomness. Such competing mental influences indeed color my impression of places I visit, which is why I actually think that Mexico City is an intriguing city in spite of its obvious socio-economic flaws. Rome holds a special place in my heart for similar reasons, with a similar randomness tempered by a refined Italian sense of materiality and detail that is not nearly as evident in even the fanciest parts of the Mexican capital. Why is this so? The answer comes from the idea that architecture is a pretty accurate manifestation of the culture that builds it. Inhabitants in this largest of cities aspire clearly in their buildings to express their modernity and their cultural sophistication but are limited by the fractiousness of social class, the lack of enforcement of regulations and an insecure public realm.

The last point was probably the most striking during my visit. I wasn't allowed to trust any taxi company, nor was I able to evade the surveillance of ubiquitous security guards (no more than 50 feet apart). Almost every storefront, particularly of upscale brands, had armed guards standing by to look for shoplifters. In suburban districts where pretty much all the inhabitants are wealthy, subdivisions are gated, with armed guards standing outside to prevent any unwanted infiltrators. To go to a business meeting, I had to submit my I.D. and be checked off a list of expected visitors by a lady behind a bullet-proof window booth outside the office building before being allowed in. On scenic residential streets, rampart walls and opaque gates line the sidewalk. It is impossible to look out to the street at ground level, something we suburban Americans take for granted across our green front lawns. I am aware that historically dense cities contain residential blocks where there are few opening along the outside wall, while views are all oriented to private courtyards. But even in the most admired European cities, the visibility of the street at ground level from inside a residence is taken for granted. One certainly doesn't have the feeling that they're being watched or tracked-down.

Although I love unpredictability and individuality, there has to be some level of regulation. Public sidewalks should not be encroached, commercial graphics and other signage should not appear just anywhere on the outside of a building, and a structure should never be left unfinished even when it is fully occupied. Public safety does indeed have its place, and I was disturbed how the design of exiting systems (dead-end corridors) were routinely ignored, guardrails and handrails non-existent, and ramps on new buildings were treated as an afterthought. I am not trying to be picky, but I find that certain minimal safety precautions are necessary in an area prone to massive earthquakes. Crossing a typical street has been made difficult by the 1 foot-high curbs, which were designed to prevent cars from climbing over to the pedestrian right of way. One has to pretty much hop on and off on curbs because they're so high, which makes it difficult to stroll casually.

Where there is so no public safety there follows little public life. I was amazed how in a city as dense as Mexico City, there were relatively few pedestrians. It seemed that most people would take cabs directly to their destination and back with little interest in strolling beyond. Here, everything is point-to-point. At night the restaurants and clubs were full of people, but outside these pockets activity, there was no one walking on the street. I wouldn't blame them, either, since I would never would want to take my family for a walk along the sidewalks. They're narrow, poorly maintained and uneven by all the private car ramps every few feet. I won't claim that this isn't problem in the U.S., since in many places, it is (my own neighborhood has no sidewalks). But for a city that models itself after the extremely pedestrian-friendly cities of Europe, one should expect more street life from one of the world's most populous metropolitan centers.

These kind shortcomings testify to a broader pattern of a lack of social trust in developing nations. One of the essential ingredients to national prosperity is a high level of social trust, allowing an environment where strangers can interact freely with one another, collaborate on joint ventures, provide capital to entrepreneur's ideas and so on. It is not enough for an elaborate set of laws to be drafted to force strangers to trust each other, it is imperative that respect for another's property and dignity as a human being be deeply ingrained in a society's cultural psychology. Such unwritten but consciously internalized safeguards make it possible for drivers not even to contemplate driving over medians or sidewalks, for street-level windows to be unprotected, for people to wander around the city or a store without uniformed personnel minding your business. What's most important is that social trust makes possible for cities to be more live-able, for life to be a bit easier as we don't have to worry about our own security. Until that level of social stability is achieved, the rich will wall themselves off from the poor, the poor will remain in their ghettos, and the influence of "bourgeois" values of respect, decency, scholarship and ambition to those who need it most will be stifled. This class isolation retards progress on all fronts, not least in the development of mobile and economically dynamic cities .

In the western suburban areas of Mexico City have so many wonderful things going for them but at their core are impediments that prevent them from truly being enjoyable places to live. The new Mexican upper middle class is growing fast, and have been filling up the western slopes of the metropolitan area with brand new apartment towers, exclusive subdivisions, and flashy shopping centers. The views from the hillsides are spectacular, the slopes as steep as those in San Francisco and the colorful warm colors of the cubic facades of houses embellishing the area's natural beauty. The area's suburban-ness precludes any real pedestrian street life, but even there, the street curbs are high, guards are every where, and shopping malls must accommodate chauffeurs (in Mexico City, chauffeurs are much less status symbols than a means to avoid using taxis which cannot be trusted, especially for individuals with high social standing). All the ingredients are there to make the western outskirts of Mexico City a destination to outsiders to visit, but the architectural manifestations of a low public trust make just another area where the new wealthy keep to themselves. Communities here are not defined by an abstract sense of civic consciousness as they are by the consistency of social class.

The lesson for me is that there's so much potential to create enjoyable public spaces in our own country. The social trust in America is very high, and the ease at which we can wander anywhere should not be taken for granted. I very much prefer the architectural taste of the Mexican elite over their American counterparts, as they agressively embrace contemporary design trends and feel no pressure to revive past styles superficially. But all the freedom to design as freely as one would like has little affect over changing the insecurity of daily life of less developed countries. You can design another Paris, but without more fundamental improvements in social trust, the inhabitants would prefer to live in a more mundane city like Dallas.

Being a 2-Year-Old Again: Thoughts on the Dictatorship of Relativism

I have not had the joy of raising children yet, but I understand there is typically some trouble during the child’s second year. As during the teenage years, the child will begin to assert their independence from his parents, and engage a troublesome process that forces the child to struggle with how much he is his own person, and how much he is part of a larger group. Some have called into question this period of the “Terrible Twos,” saying the period varies from child to child in terms of severity and length. But whatever one wants to call these stages of rebellion, they usually have something in common: the child insists on doing things their own way, and placing their worldview over and above others in the group. This can be a wonderfully painful process by which we grow and mature, provided we do not stay in such a phase for very long.

Those who remember these rebellious phases, then, may understand the way in which it is a dictatorship – you really can’t win either way. If you tow the party line, you lose your individuality. But rebelling against authority isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, either. It’s isolating, self-centered, and a generally unhappy experience, even if it is necessary on occasion. These periods of growth are often times of great confusion, because there is no universal truth for the truth-seeking 2-year-old or teenager. By definition, they are going through periods where their growth depends on their distrust of given truth, so they become perfect models for the study of relativism. 2-year-olds don’t know why they’re rebelling, and can’t give any good reasons to oppose their parents. But they do, and they seem miserable while doing it. They are living in the dictatorship of relativism.

Of course it was Pope Benedict XVI who so brilliantly and concisely defined the true damage of relativism; it replaces one dictatorship for another. (For more on his early legacy, I strongly encourage this podcast). The failure of centralized truth claims in Soviet Communism and National Socialism called for a radical de-centralization of truth claims, which both lead to a certain type of prison. If what is True is only true for one person, then that person will soon find themselves in solitary confinement. Perhaps a healthier alternative is to grow into maturity where we are unafraid to latch onto some truth claims, but not all. Isn’t this what the 2-year-old must eventually learn how to do?

Ironically, in a faith where Jesus claims to be the way, the truth, and the life, theological relativism is all the rage on the campus’ of America’s mainline seminaries. Theological relativism/liberalism is the theology of a 2-year-old. And that’s why it stinks. While there are tomes of theological works that have stood the test of time waiting to be devoured by seminarians, the majority of my theological education has revolved around Queer, African-American, Hispanic, Native American, Womanist, Feminist, and Korean theologies. In an effort to pay special attention to the individual theological truths for each person, we’ve neglected to hold to what is True for all people. And now that we’ve gone down this road, how do we possibly turn around without appearing unsympathetic, or even cruel. How can we now say, “You know, I really think each person theologizing for themselves alone is bad.” It’s sort of like saying to you spouse, “I used to love you, but now I’ve changed my mind.”

What I’m trying to get at is that for us to be truly free, we must place our stakes somewhere. Eventually children understand this, from the ages of 4-12, and probably after college. Somewhere along the way, we learn that it’s better to hold fast to our family, and learn how to disagree, rather than cut ourselves off for the sake of our rebellion. To equate all truth as equal is to state there is no truth at all. And to live in a land where there is no truth is to live under the dictatorship of relativism. Bravo to the pope for giving us this phrase; if this is not a prophetic call to change, I don’t know what is.