Posted on 12/05/2016 12:35:15 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
An obsession with cities has masked profound changes in rural America that helped Donald Trump sweep to victory in the US presidential election, according to architect Rem Koolhaas.
"I'm not saying that Trump was inevitable but the scale of upheaval in the centre of America made it very understandable for me that something else was going to happen," the founder of OMA told Dezeen.
"I was not completely surprised when Trump won."
The Dutch architect also attacked the "complacency" of Silicon Valley firms, who have for years preached the benefits of disruption.
"For me, one of the very good things about Trump [winning] is that it really discredits the whole Silicon Valley complacency, language and culture," he said, speaking exclusively to Dezeen in Miami last week.
"Every single Silicon Valley company contributed to making 'disrupt' a fashionable word, and they are now moaning about the disruption of this election."
Radical transformation of the countryside has gone unnoticed
Google and Facebook have recently been blamed for helping the spread of "fake news" that some believe helped sway the result of the presidential election.
Koolhaas, who was in Florida for the opening of a trio of Miami Beach buildings designed by OMA's New York office, has spent the last two and a half years researching changing conditions in rural areas of both the US and Russia.
Koolhaas said that changes taking place in the countryside are now more profound than those in urban areas, but that nobody has noticed.
"In the last 10-15 years we have almost exclusively looked at cities," he said, pointing out that since publication of statistics showing that more than 50 per cent of humanity now lives in cities, "90 or even 99 percent" of intellectual activity is focused on urban issues.
"If you look at all the analysis, all the books, all the vast majority are about the city," he said.
"This focus has made us blind to what is happening in the countryside," he added. "I really believe that transformation is more radical and also more essential to understand."
Mega-architecture and robotics are taking over
Dramatic changes taking place outside cities include the robotisation of both agricultural and industrial production, which is reducing the need for human labour.
"Agriculture in America is more and more concentrated on a central belt that runs from the south to the north," said Koolhaas. "And there is a kind of seasonal operation where larger and larger machines that are used for harvesting are so big that no individual farmer can actually own one. They become like armada of machinery that that is so expensive that it has to function 24 hours a day."
"That is concentrating a large percentage of all the production in America in a central zone. So it is in our view no so coincidence that that is where the Trump voters were voting."
On top of this, a new form of mega-architecture is starting to creep into the countryside to house the server farms, distribution warehouses and factories that require almost no human labour and which are too big to fit in cities, he explained.
"What we have discovered in America is an enormous impact of Silicon Valley in terms of how its infrastructure reaches a scale which simply cannot be fitted into cities any more so it has to be fitted to the countryside," said the architect.
"For instance in Nevada there is now huge concentrations of server farms, fulfilment centres, battery factories and all of that is reaching the scale of a city but it will never have the density of the city."
"So I have the sense that there is new condition emerging which is probably highly automated, highly robotised entities that are supporting this digital revolution, that requires fewer and fewer people. So I think that that in itself very interesting architectural typology which we haven't seen so far."
"This is leading to new types of architecture that are designed for robots rather than humans," he continued.
"The issue of automation clearly already has an enormous impact. In architecture there's simply no awareness that in the near future we may have to plan buildings for machines rather than for human beings. I don't know what that could be, because for machines you don't need handicapped access, you can be harsh. It will have an effect on everything."
Jobs losses are due to automation, not overseas competitors
Koolhaas gave the example of Amazon warehouses, which are getting bigger and bigger but require fewer and fewer workers. "You probably have no idea of the number, the scale, the constantly increasing scale," he said. "And also how they are not so much looking for cheaper workers but actually becoming institutions without workers."
During the election, Trump made much of the fact that American factory jobs were being lost to overseas competitors, promising to end free-trade deals that made this possible.
However a report published last year by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University found that 85 percent of the 5.6 million manufacturing jobs lost in the USA between 2000 and 2010 were due to automation rather than offshoring.
Koolhaas also spoke out about Brexit, saying it was "really inexplicable" that the UK's largely pro-European youth failed to turn out to vote.
"It's really criminal I would say, because they let it happen. It wouldn't have happened if they had voted," he said.
"What is so bad about Brexit is that it's also undermining Europe. So there may be no Europe to go back to."
Koolhaas, 72, is one of the world's most influential architects and ranks at number 12 on the 2016 Dezeen Hot List.
World-renowned architect?
What did he design? The Guggenheim? Heard it didn’t take very long.
This guy is amazingly stupid.
He accurately describes the issues with Silicon Valley (social disruption) and urbanization, yet endorses the degenerate EU which causes disruption and urbanization.
Yeah, so much stupidity from one guy. Incredible.
Here’s an interesting one, though.
[ Silicon Valley firms, who have for years preached the benefits of disruption. ]
Well, that explains their love for community organizer / radical / destroyer Obama.
He may have accidentally gotten one thing correct but didn’t realize it.
really. so the 1000 carrier jobs, etc. that were headed for mexico are going there to be automated by 1000 robots in mexico? why not automate here if it was so easy.
and so we are to believe that massive robotic wherehouses are going to be more cost efficient than the trains, trucks and just-in-time inventory software we use right now which got rid of big wherehouses in the first place?
please gimme a break from these educated elite idiots: bs meter pegged off the charts.
bkmk
An interesting comment. My reply would be - that's because these so-called "disruptors" are actually monopolists who have learned that at their size, their fortunes depend on the goodwill of governments and politicians.
“Dramatic changes taking place outside cities include the robotisation of both agricultural and industrial production, which is reducing the need for human labour.”
Pure BS. The robotization of labor is in the form of Chinese and Mexican “human robots”, that’s who’s doing the “jobs that Americans won’t do”.
And many Americans won’t do those jobs because they can live quite well on welfare, food stamps and section 8 housing.
Does that add anything to the conversation?
He accurately describes the issues with Silicon Valley (social disruption) and urbanization, yet endorses the degenerate EU which causes disruption and urbanization.
The EU provides massive subsidies to agriculture.
Wouldn't that tend to keep people on working farms, rather than encouraging urbanization?
Thanks for the stimulating post.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I like to go outside the box every now and then.
I hadn’t, but I don’t pay much attention to who posts what. I have little interest in the social component of FR. But going outside of the box is a good thing IMV.
If the establishment, Clinton, Jeb, Chuck Todd, Bill Kristol, etal did not act so arrogant and elitist and superior to the deplorables, Trump would have never won.
Racism is when one demographic group feels superior to another demographic group. Is the establishment racist?
Yes it does add to the conversation. The fact that he thinks it’s almost criminal that the young and ignorant didn’t vote to stop Brexit is a bad thing - that’s stupid. That somehow the U.K. Voting for national control will end “Europe” is again stupid. Europe, really the EU, was an economic agreement that added layers upon layers of bureaucracy that didn’t serve national interests of any of its members again is stupid. The EU was supposed to pull barriers down not add new power to the elites.
Outsourcing is killing the US production capabilities. All those factories in Mexico, China, ... are there to bypass stupid US environmental, safety, tax and labor laws not to access robotics. It’s all an effort to focus wealth into the hands of the few. Stupid laws, stupid politicians, stupid greed and stupid population. Environmental concerns are for wealthy countries only. If there is no wealth in the hands of the citizenry then poverty creates a dirty nasty country period. Stupid stupid stupid. This is the reflections of an educated idiot. Just my stupid opinion ;)
They're also not that unhappy with EU regulations, so far as I know. Europeans are used to putting up with things like that.
You disagree with him about the EU. That's because you have different interests and view the question from different angles. It doesn't mean he's stupid.
From his own point of view, if nationalism meant he was shut out of commissions in Madrid or Copenhagen or Riga, it hurts his income. Other Dutchmen might feel that they benefit from the opportunity to work in those cities as well. Americans and Britons don't feel the same way, but maybe the Dutch know their own interests better than we do.
But isn't the EU supposed to be imposing restrictions on imports? If they're doing their job, aren't they supposed to be discouraging outsourcing and factory flight?
Bookmark for later re-read. This gent has some interesting points and while I may not be in full agreement, I’ll reread later for info mining.
I agree with you. The interests of the citizens (be it EU or Netherlands) are from their citizenry to their government. The citizens vote for that control. I have no issue personally with Europeans voting for the EU or against it but it’s not all one way. It’s their vote but my issue is the comment about manufacturing being impacted by automation. If I am automating a factory, I do it in a country that can support and maximize the automation. Our (USA) loss doesn’t look like it’s due to automation. It looks to me to get around our government and its regulations. Wages are the third maybe second order cause. I think, maybe I just hope, that the US population woke up about the cause of our 30 year decline.
Anyway, I do wish I had more experience with European politics and economics.
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