Connecting the dots between the midterms and better scaffolding
Even if the outcome of this last extraordinary national election disappointed you, only the most hardened cynic could remain unmoved by the ballet of everyday people across this vast and beautiful nation expressing their will. Turnout was strong. Partisans thought flexibly. Permanent majorities, which are not a thing, reversed. For me at least, America for the first time in a long time felt like a place that gave a damn, like a place that cares.
Care, as expressed collectively across the broader expanse of this society, is always a shock to me despite the fact that I often experience it locally. This is in part due to my profession. The most frequent refrain I and many of my fellow architects hear is “Who cares?” The question, usually followed by a glib “no one will notice but you,” springs mostly from the lips of contractors and builders, but it can just as easily flow from clients, developers, engineers, government junkies, consultants trying to prove their worth, or, most surprisingly, the occasional politician or journalist. The context is always some version of: We want to replace the stone you proposed for the project with some cheap laminate that will — wait for it — be stone-colored! No one will notice but you, so who cares?
As an architect working primarily on behalf of the public, often contracted by the government, I am baffled by this profound abdication of civic duty. Of course that duty also, but not only, entails guarding the public purse, but what happens when austerity becomes a cynical political calculation of short-term gain versus long-term pain? In France, the streets are on fire in part because the schools are in shambles, yet here in Gotham, luxury condominium and public school construction shockingly run at about the same cost per square foot; despite these gobsmacking expenditures, our school buildings could clearly be far better. Who cares? For decades, the local political class thought it was just fine for Penn Station to not even meet today’s fire code. Who cares? We can’t build a one-stop ride directly to our airports, unlike every city in our competitive set, all while it has taken more than six years to repair the Van Wyck Expressway even though it took less than two to build the Empire State Building. Who cares?
This raises the question of what we, as a people, do in fact care about beyond the immediate needs of our families. Many care about the values our politicians express much more than the outcomes they deliver. People say housing is a right, but will then fight the construction of nearby supportive housing for the recently homeless. People want public safety, but too often view all of the police with blanket derision. People want great mass transit, but turn a blind eye to turnstile jumpers. People want preservation of historic structures and neighborhoods, but care little about the architecture of the new.
What people do seem to care passionately about, across the political spectrum, is their seemingly God-given right to be cynical — particularly regarding all things public — far more than they are willing to admit, and far more than the facts justify.
For over a year my firm, alongside others, has been working on a new design prototype that can provide an alternative to our terrible sidewalk sheds, the much-bemoaned protective structures that hurt Gotham’s pedestrian life far more than they should for far longer than they should. To its credit, the Adams administration began a multipronged effort to both reform regulations to reduce the need for and duration of sidewalk sheds and improve the design of those we will continue to require.
To its credit, the Mamdani administration has advanced both efforts, most recently building mock-ups of two of our designs that are now on view at the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. Our goal is to use known scaffolding construction techniques to build better, safer, brighter sheds, all at a minimal cost premium. Key to our design, which is owned by the City and can be freely used by any contractor, is the premise that angling the shed upward toward the street will bring in more light and air. Unseen is the fact that the City is passing long-overdue reforms to reduce the amount and duration of shed construction.
Cue the cynics! An onslaught of social media snark, paired of course with the predictable New York Post screed, ensued. The design doesn’t matter, some said, we need fewer sheds! (Why bother to discover that such reforms are underway?) How will the rain and snow ever drain from these slanted communist debacles, they carped — what possible technological miracle, in this age of AI and miracle vaccines, could we use to drain water off a sloped roof? (Hint: a gutter.) The mock-up didn’t include the gutter for a variety of reasons, but is benefit of the doubt now impossible? It would seem that, regardless of our qualifications, we are all incompetent until proven competent.
After this last national election, we should all be far less cynical. Everyday people rose up to demand change. heartland citizens showed coastal progressives that they are far less animated by race than cynical stereotypes suggest. Centrists, so often derided, prevailed far more than extremists. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s popularity may be more about his “pothole politics” work ethic than his ideological beliefs, which is why he succeeded in passing ballot measures that will speed the delivery of public goods. The pundits all agree that now is the time for all politicians to deliver for the people, to lower prices, to seek peace, to establish fair immigration policies, to build the infrastructure we need. To, in short, care.
But how can politicians deliver anything their constituents want when people are so cynical about any and all government action?
What should be obvious in the wake of this huge election is that cynicism, even about an effort as small as our sidewalk sheds, is a deeply dangerous vicious circle. I am no less guilty: I rant about the Van Wyck construction and the decades of failures at Penn Station, and then wonder why people are cynical about my own and others’ efforts on behalf of the public. People see the widespread failures brought on by our collective shortsightedness, by our penury, by our snail-like progress, by our cheapening of the nonluxury world, and then become jaded when we try to fix any of it.
Yes, our politicians have “to deliver,” but to do so, we the people must continue to act like the adults we manifested on Election Day. When the public sector tries to enact change as the body politic is seemingly demanding, it will be imperfect. The more we pile on petty critiques of every last shortfall, whether real or perceived, the more slow and imperfect it will become. Even when the government does deliver, the urge to pounce, the clickbait temptation to shoot first and ask questions later, demands a gut check.
Of course we should ask tough questions of our politicians and the professionals they hire; this is why we work in a democracy. But democracy isn’t a one-way street: citizens have an obligation, particularly in our social media age, to engage in civil and informed discourse, to care about our public world as much as they want it to care about them. If over a century ago our society — public and private sector alike — could however imperfectly deliver Grand Central Terminal (made, ahem, of real stone), Central Park, the world’s first subway system with express trains, and a speculative street grid that is the genius design engine that fuels this remarkable place, how can we not feel an obligation to deliver similarly great contributions to our shared future?
So let’s try to care more and grouse less. That is my demand of myself coming out of this election. Let’s care about better schools and sidewalks and subways and train stations, care not only about their functional aptitude and their fiscal rectitude, but their physical fortitude. We have emerged into a new cultural moment in this nation, this ever-forming, always frustrating city on a hill. The electorate is fickle, but this teeming city, this canyon of dreams, is forever. What we build now, both physically and socially, will be emblematic of who we are far more than any one election, because building coalitions alone isn’t enough. The whiplash of the last two national elections has proven that all victories are fleeting — if you seek permanence, touch some stone. Because what matters is what endures.
