Do architecture critics matter?

Francis Morrone of The New Criterion asks a good question: "Do architecture critics matter?"

And here's the crux of what makes architecture criticism so damnably tricky. Kamin is of course right that architecture should be understandable to everyone. Only an idiot ... would fail to see that buildings aren't works of fine art in the same sense that easel paintings are or poems or pieces of concert music. It is for the very simple reason that buildings must serve practical functions that have nothing to do with fine art and that they are utterly inescapable, unlike the paintings in museums or the books on library shelves. The urban architect simply does not possess the right to impose his aesthetic vision on the public. Or does he? Huxtable would have answered that he does and that it is the critics job to educate the public to understand buildings.