ruminations about architecture and design

Friday, May 11, 2012

the great recovery

Only a fool makes predictions about the economy, so here is my prediction about the economy:

We might be on the way up, but the signs are troubling. Housing inventory is high, lending is depressed, and ordinary people are bringing home less money, while watching medical costs increase. The great experiment in austerity is having predictable results--namely, a prolonged and miserable recession. Architecture is creeping back, but capacity is underutilized and talent is being diverted or sidelined. If any profession is undergoing a structural change, it is probably design. More demand could help bring back 30% of the jobs that were lost, but not all of them (corrected for natural population growth rates).

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