I am surprised that he is surprised

James Fallows:

I used to think that a topic like -- oh, let's see, US-China friction -- was controversial, or climate change, or Google-v-Microsoft, or McNamara-v-Rumsfeld. That was before I innocently stepped into the crossfire concerning the effect of "star-chitects" like Frank Gehry on the urban landscape.

There's a very simple explanation: the work of guys like Gehry (of course all architects, to be fair) impacts enormously and directly in our daily lives. Politics at the local level is almost entirely land-use politics. It is only global journalists like Fallows who seem to ignore the great interest in what can best be called urban design— and usually very crudely expressed — which people at the neighborhood level have in what is built in their neighborhood.

Fred Kent's quizzing of Frank Gehry is exactly what we need. We owe both men some thanks: Kent for getting the issue of iconic architecture vs. human-scaled walkable neighborhoods before the public and Gehry for showing his disdain for what Leona Hemsley might have called "the little people's convern."  

UPDATE:

A reader chides the tone of this post. Let me clarify and apologize as necessary. My headline question was meant straight: In terms of quality of life, the struggle to overcome Modernism and its anti-urban legacy (Gehry, Hadid, Koolhaas etc) is important to the quality of life of millions. So much psychic energy is invested in the star architects and so little in neighborhood planning. But which is more important? So it always surprises me when a fine thinker on the global scale doesn't seem to be aware of the intense energy surrounding the politics of a single building.

And by referring to Fallows as a "global journalist" I think I only spoke the truth — his reputation is global. But I also tried to contrast the vast attention paid to global concerns by global media versus the scant attention paid at the global level to local concerns. That would seem reasonable except that many of these local issues are the source and cause of many global concerns. Of course here I am referring to global climate change, the shape of our cities, our fixation on fantasy architecture, our dependence on foreign oil and hence our national defense policy. Let me put it this way: a lot of international tension stems from neighborhood planning policy. That is not an exaggeration.

I was also trying to allude to a vast gap in the general intellectual media — one akin to C.P. Snow's Two Cultures of "science" versus "humanities' — in which there is very little awareness among general intellectual media of the critical issues surrounding the built environment. Atlantic Yards and Chelsea Barracks are huge and rich arenas for discussion and ones critical to the future of our world. Yet does anyone report on them besides the narrowly-focussed "architectural critics" such as Nicolai Ourossoff? I would venture "no." They appear to be local arts-craftsy sideshows instead of disputes central to our global future.

I'll try to be clearer next time. :)