On reviewing the "elite" columnists

Update: A reader suggested that I add Francis Morrone to my list. I assure you, dear reader, and everyone else, that Francis would have been the first name on the list if his column appeared in a place accessible to people without subscription. Sadly, the NY Sun is making the grave error -- in my opinion -- of pricing its site by the quarter rather than, say, via micro-payments  for each article.

Bad decision for them and bad result for those of us who would like to read Francis on a regular -- rather than sporadic at 2 Blowhards -- basis.

Update 2: It sems to me that it is a courtsey to the reader to place updates at the top of the post -- rather than the bottom -- so people don't miss them. Do you agree?

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I happened to scroll through the column of Columnists offered by Arts & Letters Daily and what struck me was that -- so far as I know, and the purpose of this post is to solicit your opinion -- rarely does any one them have anything to say about the built & physical environment -- whether childish or sophisticated, whether one agrees or not.

Is that a fair assessment of this list? Or am I missing something?

Columnists

Eric Alterman
Anne Applebaum
Timothy Garton Ash
Bruce Bawer
Alex Beam
James Bowman
Robert Boynton
Samuel Brittan
David Brooks
Art Buchwald
William F. Buckley
Jon Carroll
Noam Chomsky
Alexander Cockburn
Joe Conason
Miranda Devine
E. J. Dionne Jr.
Michael Dirda
Maureen Dowd
Roger Ebert
Michael Elliott
Robert Fisk
Thomas Friedman
Robert Fulford
Frank Furedi
Malcolm Gladwell
Ellen Goodman
Victor Davis Hanson
Johann Hari
Jeet Heer
Nat Hentoff
Jan Herman
Jim Hightower
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Molly Ivins
Jeff Jacoby
Leon Jaroff
Robert Kagan
Tony Karon
Mickey Kaus
Michael Kinsley
Joe Klein
Martin Kramer
Morton Kondracke
Chas Krauthammer
Paul Krugman
Howard Kurtz
Norman Lebrecht
John Leo
James Lileks
Kevin Maney
Salim Mansour
Paddy McGuinness
Mark Morford
Robert Novak
Brendan O'Neill
Daniel Pipes
Katha Pollitt
Virginia Postrel
William Powers
Dorothy Rabinowitz
Jonathan Rauch
Roger Sandall
William Shawcross
Sam Smith
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
Andrew Sullivan
Tunku Varadarajan
David Warren
Margaret Wente
George Will
Jonathan Yardley
J. Peder Zane

I guess I'd have to except Fulford, Postrel and Gladwell whose writings seem to be somewhat rooted in "the real." And don't get me wrong -- there are lots of smart people here: Sullivan, Appelbaum,  Hari, Garton Ash...maybe lots more. (Some however clearly listed as a favor.)

But in any case the vast majority seem to be so narrowly focussed, so "intellectual"...so in their heads as we would have said in the sixties that they don't seem to notice that there is a physical tangible world of buildings and streets around them. Or if they do ever consider something physical, say, American suburban patterns as Brooks does now and then, they do such a dreary job of it that they would be better off to remain silent. No? I have to admit that I am not very familar with every last one of them so correct me if I am wrong.

Why doesn't A&LD add some blue-chip (i.e. you can't be embarassed by them) names like Rybczynski, Goldsberger, or even Ourousoff? (As unimpressive as the last one seems to me to be, he at least tries to grapple with the built environment. Sorta.) I am quite sure that there are more scattered about. Neal Peirce, for example. While I am not an enormous fan of his perspective he does do a workmanlike job of covering state & local government where a great deal of the story is, in fact, land use and transportation. It would be healthy for A&LD readership's consciousness if such people were listed.

Overall, it's like CP Snow and the 2 cultures over again.

It seems to me that that people like Libeskind and Koolhaas et al get away with their arid verbalizations and be considered deep "theorists" about the built environment because the vast majority of the chatterers -- the big-time columnists represented by the A&LD list -- are inexperienced with even starting to think about how society is put together physically and thus bashful about engaging in any criticism of architects who they are told are "big." Btw, that's one opf the reasons that I believe PPS' initiative (covered earlier today) will go nowhere is because there is no core of columnists -- hey! maybe not even a very very few! -- who actually talk about the physical issues and are able to tie them back to other currents of our culture.

At any rate, as a practical matter to try to remedy this situation, I have added a new link list: Big Name 'Design' Critics. (Left hand column.) If you have suggestions of main stream media people who cover this beat on a regular basis and whose work is accessible on the web, please suggest their names and their links

Comments

[Laurence Aurbach]

Here are a few suggestions. Some of these require free registration.

1) John King's approximately twoce-weekly column, San Francisco Chronicle

2) Multiple writers, The Hartford Courant's Sunday "Place" section

3) David Brussat's Thursday columns, The Providence Journal.

4) Otis White's daily Urban Notebook, Governing Magazine. The Civic Strategies' metro news scan (sorted by issue or location) and its Urban Journalism Awards from the past three years are valuable resources. Otis White is indefatigable.

5) Carol Coletta's weekly Smart City radio show.

[Lisa Williams]

I think a lot of people don't feel comfortable being critics of architecture, and limit themselves to swipes at big-box retailers and strip malls -- things they think everyone must agree with, and which are frequently read not as architecture criticism but as prejudice against "regular folks" who shop at Wal-Mart.

I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable criticizing jazz or wine -- there are certain areas of endeavor that it seems to take some sort of expertise to have an opinion about.

But maybe "deprofessionalization" of this type of criticism would be the best thing that ever happened, by bringing more people into the conversation, and making people realize that they could have a voice in resisting tacky, ugly, anti-person buildings and complexes.

I had an example of this kind of thing, a person in my town giving a very thorough rundown (negative) of a newly-built townhouse in our town: it's at http://h2otown.info.

[Tyler Green]

A&L Daily is hopelessly arts clueless. Not just architecture and design, but all the rest.

[AF]

I think a lot of people either take the structures for granted or rarely even see them.

What about columnists or authors who write about place, like Stegner or Steinbeck? There more of those, which supports Lisa's theory.

Tom Graham is doing a series in the SF Chronicle called Walking Man. Here are is earlier installments.

[David Sucher]

Lisa -- need I point out that columnists rarely restrict themselve to subjects about which they know something? I imagine that their lack of knowledge/insight/sophistication would become obvious if they wrote about things -- the physical city through which they literally move every day -- other than "politics." Moreover, I don't think it's appropriate -- and it actually proves my point -- to compate wine and jazz to the built world. Such characterization seems to relegate it to "buffs" and "hobbyists."

AF -- Exactly, they don't "see." As to Stegner and Steinbeck, I was hoping for people still alive. But thanks for the link to Graham

[Desmond Bliek]

Maisonneuve magazine, out of Montreal, has an excellent column called the urban eye, which does in large part what you call for in this post.

It can be found at:

http://www.maisonneuve.org/blog/index.php?use_blog_name=urban

By the way, I think as a culture, we don't give ourselves nearly enough credit for what we know intuitively about built landscapes. Although critiquing architecture might require some degree of specialised knowledge (much as any form of art), I don't think that the same can be said of urbanism. Hopefully the basic types (such as a 'square,' a 'lane,' or a common') of our landscape haven't been co-opted to the point that they have meaning only as mall slogans or names, and not as genuine urban place types. If this subconscious knowledge still remains, then anyone can be an informed critic of how places work, regardless of the 'finer' aspects of the architecture.

Really good commentary of late, thank you.

Desmond Bliek

[Lisa Williams]

I'm not trying to validate the columnists' blind spot, or make architecture seem like a hobby (though I think "hobbies" are underrated, and often unfairly marginalized simply because they don't make money or aren't high status occupations in society).

I'm just trying to understand why people (all people, not just columnists) feel comfortable bullshitting -- talking without deep knowledge -- about some subjects, but not others. Why? Maybe what it has in common with wine and jazz is not whether it's a hobby, but that they all have highly specialized vocabularies(jargon). I definitely learn new words when I read reviews of architecture, but I like that.

[Clarence Yung]

Oh, come on. As much as I enjoy talking about the built environment, you have to admit that the majority of these people are talking about things that matter much more to the US. How can we blame them for not talking about where buildings meet streets when one of the most robust and interesting debates over the direction of our country is currently being played out?

As much as I love reading John King's column (the only good thing in the Chron), I'd choose Paul Krugman or Noam Chomsky any day over King. Likewise, if given the chance to watch a debate between Duany and Koolhaas versus a debate between Bill Kristol and Peter Beinart, well, goddammit, I'd skip out on Duany/Koolhaas.

Sure, there are arts critics on the list, and it'd be awesome if added an architectural critic. However, I think it's more important for them to have voices such as Krugman, Friedman, Will, et al on this list; their discussions are much more salient to the everyday than the aesthetic. Food on the table's more important to Americans than the house in which the food is served.

Also, in saying not "to compate wine and jazz to the built world," I think you're looking myopically at other arts--the culinary and the musical--in the same way that others look myopically at the built world. Let's take, for instance, jazz--jazz was an enormously influential musical movement rooted in critique of segregation. Its message influenced the movement to end second-class citizenship of African-Americans. It is of enormous relevance to the lovers of jazz and the believers of its influence on the world to critique its direction. To argue that such critiques of current jazz are hobbyist is the exact argument that others use to marginalize our critiques of the built world.

Anyway, I'm just saying--let's not tear down arts while trying to promote the built world.

[David Sucher]

Dear Clarence,
You are proving my point about the great divide and the true lack of understanding of the connection between the shape of our cities and (for example) foreign policy If you think that creating pedestrian oriented cities is a matter of "aesthetics."

[Clarence Yung]

David, if I am to understand your argument, what you're saying is that creating pedestrian-oriented cities is the panacea to all that ails American society--eg, foreign policy. Now, I'm all for understanding, criticizing, and fixing urban space, but at the same time, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that the sorry state of the built environment is at the root of the cause of our societal problems.

I think that the claim that the built environment is SYMPTOMATIC of societal nihilism is a more believable claim to analyze. But in that case, a critique of societal values, morals, etc. is more germane toward improving America and, in the process, raising the awareness of buildings and the built environment.

[David Sucher]

No Clarence, I am afraid that I am not communicating very clearly.

[David Sucher]

My suspicion is that the big-name columnists don't ever -- except in the crudest, most cartoonish, high school freshman way -- write about the built world -- which is literally around them almost every moment of every day -- is because it would expose their ignorance. It's easy to opine on politics, maybe even a bit on economics if you work for a Rupert Murdoch media. But to write about the built environment (and this goes for science writing as well) actually requires some expertise - not simply knowing how to type.

[Clarence Yung]

That's an interesting point. I'd probably agree with you that it takes some sort of expertise and knowledge to properly critique the built world, but here's an oft-heard counterargument:

Doesn't everyone experience the built world, and have some sort of layperson's "expertise" in the function of the built world? Isn't the layperson's experience and exploration of the built world a more interesting discussion than theory-laden expertise?