With our economy going to hell-in-a-handbasket, there has been a worrisome stir in the extended community that includes architects, planners, and developers. Being that houses across the country are being foreclosed, home loan approval is nearly impossible, housing developments sit idle, half-built, and office buildings are emptying into the streets of every major city, what may yet become of their livelihoods? Allow me to put those minds at ease…
Assuming that President Elect Obama will keep his promise to light a flame underneath an economic plan that will ignite a “Green Deal”, it’s only the very beginning of a new era in architecture as well as physical layout and design, when there will be opportunities too numerous to count. This is because in this proposed future, a lot of heads and hands will be necessary to implement out-of-the-box solutions for square-one designs, and energy-efficient retrofits of old architecture and municipal layout/infrastructure to become manifest.
Assuming the perceived urgency of the current Green Movement continues to gain momentum, I expect maverick architects, planners, engineers, and developers will have a field day (or rather, a field decade) with consideration to all of the unhinged possibilities for creative engineering and re-imagining. The heretofore bridaled visionaries will perhaps have more creative latitude, funding, and public support than ever, at least in the modern age, to propose super innovative and foundation-shaking solutions. And where municipal zoning and subdivision laws have literally made everything resemble everything else in our physical environment, while attempting to make every function fit neatly into the same size and brand of box – be it a mall, a Walmart, a McDonalds, a parking space, or a cubicle – local, state, and federal agencies will soon hurry to pass legislation that encourages intelligent physical design and thoughtful accounting of resources. Through the coming years, this will further be facilitated by federal funding requirements and the shift toward supporting industries, a labor force, and a marketplace that manufacture Green materials, technologies, and systems.
Give it a decade… If the forthcoming administration can lead the charge toward dedicated research, development, and application of conservation-minded technology, energy, material, and space solutions, an entirely new family of products and services may yet become available… to eventually become ever more efficient and affordable.
Consider how the personal computer, the internet, the digital camera, and the cell phone have indelibly changed our lives over the past decade. If the aforementioned ideas can get a foothold for even one-half a generation, Green thinking and conscious behavior will no longer be on the fringe. It will simply be the way things are…
The Voice of Eye 