Infrastructure Week may finally be here. As the American Jobs Plan winds its way through Congress, one can all but see the design professions salivating at the prospect of an endless building campaign. Their eagerness should not surprise us. Only four years ago, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) effused a burning desire to work with President-elect Donald Trump on an infrastructure bill that never actually materialized. In our industry, infrastructure and commissions are usually a binary measure, and their qualitative dimensions are rarely scrutinized. It is why the AIA and its allied professional organizations have moved so nimbly between backing Trump, then the Green New Deal, and now the American Jobs Plan—each is, first and foremost, a jobs guarantee for design firms. All of this should serve as a reminder that the primary form of political practice in design remains securing lucrative government contracts for private firms to build our cities.
Source: Billy Fleming, Metropolis
Image Credit: Metropolis, Drew Angerer/Getty Images