As one Boston architect, a personal friend of SDJ’s editor, can attest to, having been laid off in December, the American Institute of Architects projects an 11% drop in design and construction activity this year, according to its semi-annual Consensus Construction Forecast.
Therefore, because the building sector accounts for about one in every ten dollars of the U.S.’s GDP, the AIA is trying to impose itself into Obama’s economic recovery plans. The national architecture association has developed the Rebuild and Renew Plan.
“The AIA is calling on the new administration and Congress to create policies that ensure these monies are spent on the planning, design and construction of energy efficient, sustainable buildings and healthy communities that are advantageous for both the environment and economy,” according to an article posted on Dexigner.com. “If implemented correctly, the nearly $100 billion plan would create 1.6 million jobs throughout the design and construction industry. Recent reports estimate that the economic recovery package may total as much as $800 billion, with at least $350 billion dedicated to infrastructure projects.”
22/01/2009 • 2:30 pm 0
AIA makes suggestions for Obama recovery plans
21/01/2009 • 2:00 am 0
Some of it sounds right: Now let’s implement it
Embedded video from CNN Video
“We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.”
“We will harness the sun and winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”
“All this we can do. All this we will do.
“There are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination has joined a common purpose.”
“The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.”
“…Know that your people will judge you based on what you can build; not on what you can destroy.”
Filed under: community, green, housing, Obama, sustainability, technology, transportation
19/01/2009 • 12:01 am 0
Shovel it: More mass transit
Congressmen discussing the econ. stim. bill are indeed calling for funding for shovel-ready projects, just as Carol Coletta forecasted in my interview with her earlier this month. View the WSJ online article.
The govt cannot be serious about 1) doing shove-ready projects (those can wait); 2) put more $ toward highways than public transit projects/alternative energy stocking along highways (for that would certainly be the perpetuation of America’s reliance on fossil fuels).
It’s already becoming the norm for people to not only move closer into the cities but also to consider public transit. Everyone who drives complains about traffic and the cost of gas. Public transit is a must!
I also do not agree that airports need anything. Let the airline industry take care of itself. After all, didn’t American taxpayers give them a big financial lift after 9-11, much like the bank industry after the real estate bubble/credit lending debacle crashed?
Filed under: construction, legislation, Obama, transportation, urbanization
18/01/2009 • 11:41 pm 0
This is a democracy?
Below are some key numbers for the House’s first draft of the economic stimulus bill, acc. to Stateline.org:
* $43 billion for increased unemployment benefits
* $20 billion to increase the food stamp benefit
* $30 billion for highway construction
* $19 billion for clean water, flood control and environmental cleanup programs
* $4 billion for state and local anti-crime initiatives, including $3 billion for the Byrne Justice Assistance, which pays for programs to battle drug trafficking.
No fighting drug trafficking. For god’s sake how long must this unwinnable war continue? Legalize the stuff, make $ off of it so taxes don’t take up so much of politicians’ hot air, and turn the jobs from fighting the war to their safe sales. Look at the alcohol industry, people. Not that complicated. For a nation supposedly so progressive, we are tragically left in the 19th century.
No, not $30 billion in highway construction, unless by that you mean these: installation of telecommunications, plugins for electric cars, alternative energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels lining highways. We do not need to proliferate an instrument that helped us get into Iraq, global warming, a nationwide obesity epidemic, and economic woes. No more roads!
Filed under: legislation, Obama, technology, transportation
17/01/2009 • 7:42 pm 0
Solomon speaks: the WPA and New Urbanism
“The idea that is emerging from many sources in different forms is to retool America – its cities, its industry, its infrastructure and its landscape – to flourish in the post-oil economy of the mid-21st century. The post-oil economy will be as profound for the 21st century as the railroad was for the 19th, or the automobile was for the 20th, and it will be carried with a force of inevitability greater than either.”
So wrote Dan Solomon, co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism in the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday (as brought to my attention by Filmanowicz’s twittering/blog).
“Now American housing faces new challenges. Most Americans cannot afford housing in the great urban centers that are served by public transportation and should be the locus of economic activity. There are no policy tools to address the growing disparity between the costs of producing housing, particularly housing that does not depend upon automobiles, and what middle class people can afford.”
Read his piece in the SFChronicle.
Filed under: architecture, community, construction, housing, Obama, real estate, transportation, urbanization
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