Panel 1: Civic Infrastructure
Sarah Williams Goldhagen Ok, let’s break this down, because in America the people who tend to go into the built environment tend to believe in the built envi32
ronment, and tend to believe that they can make a contribution. Why is it difficult to establish a set of goals and then push them through? Marilyn Taylor If you look at what America is and can be, we have a remarkable quality of inventiveness. This is where there’s a line of logic that can change the way we have been thinking about the issue. When we are most successful as Americans in this industry, we research and arrive at a moment of intuition that sparks an idea. And then you’re off and running. But that research is always there to remind you what goals you set out for yourself, what you were trying to prove. In this rush to spend as much money as we possibly can for our private clients, and to get things done in a hurry for our public clients, that time to stop and think about what it is we’re trying to achieve is getting squeezed and lost. And frankly, we haven’t helped it by saying ‘We have two weeks. We’ll write the algorithms, we’ll generate the scheme, it’ll look beautiful and everybody will love it.’ Robert Culver There are a lot of what I what I refer to as “Gucci architects” who are being hired by wealthy people to create these sustainable, beautiful, wealthy environments for them in the Hamptons. They drive their own jets to get to places and they have their own little driven cart. The issue is one of the wealth. For those of you who have not been to the home of Franklin D. Eleanor Roosevelt that sits on the Hudson River in the little town of Hyde Park, New York, you should do that. You will get a sense of the man, who was a man of wealth, prestige, and power. The way in which he lived allowed him to say, ‘It’s not about me.’ He was a rather humble man in his environment. He was a man who understood that it was his role to serve and protect the entirety of the Untied States. We have been lacking that for at least the last 20, if not 30, years.