HUD-winked

Archinect Sessions

When president-elect Donald Trump nominated Ben Carson to lead the department of Housing and Urban Development, the response was resoundingly: huh?

The neurosurgeon came onto the national political scene in 2015, during his run for the Republican nomination, but after Trump took the presidency and started throwing around the idea of offering a Cabinet position to Carson, a spokesperson said "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency." Despite all that, Carson is now (almost definitely officially) secretary of HUD (which he knows just enough about to seriously backtrack the agency's work as pushed by Obama). So here we are.

Special guest Marc Miller joins us on the podcast to discuss the implications of Carson's inexperience for HUD, as well as chew on the latest Schumacher-induced controversy: when the architect promoted the privatization of public space and trashed social housing at a recent talk in Berlin, ZHA responded to his remarks in an open letter, distancing the firm from its principal's so-called 'urban policy manifesto'.

Miller has degrees in landscape architecture, architecture and fine arts, and has practiced as an architect, urban designer, campus planner, and architectural lighting designer. He currently teaches in the landscape architecture department at Pennsylvania State University, and previously at Cornell.