ARCHITECTURE

all, and the terms through which it was beginning to be articulated
were largely ecological in nature [See HH: 1970].
Despite attention paid to environmental causes, as well as
the Cold War’s geopolitical repercussions, the techniques
of globalism—namely deregulation and management of
the worldwide recession—were increasingly relegated to
the realm of finance. The CEA paints expanded participation
as exclusive to the market economy, bracketing out
the other sociocultural transformations that facilitated it.
President Richard Nixon’s moratorium on federal subsidies
for the construction of public housing and the introduction
in 1974 of a precursor to the contemporary housing
voucher program are two of the more obvious signs of
this shift [See HH: 1973]. 35
President Ronald Reagan continued this move
from brick-and-mortar subsidies to tenant-based housing
allowances—a shift taking place across advanced industrialized
countries, in line with generally decreased faith
in welfare-state services, an increased reliance on the private
market to fulfill this role, and a growing emphasis on
consumer choice [See HH: 1986]. 36 Precisely at this time,
when low-income households lacked the financial security
that had made housing a sound investment for the
middle class before them, the U.S. and other advanced
industrialized countries began to promote low-income
homeownership. 37
Taking these factors into account generates friction
with received narratives of baby-boomer prosperity
as reinforced by the CEA. Not only was the underclass in
a more precarious position than it had been in previous
generations, but its ever more limited options were increasingly
determined through according to the metric of
security. If, during this era as defined by the CEA, participation
was expanding in the middle-class workforce, for
those less fortunate it was also expanding in the nascent
prison-industrial complex. Increasingly, housing in the
United States included not only single family homes and
multi-family apartments, but cellblocks—with the incarceration
rate increasing fourfold since the early 1970s. 38
The institution of punitive drug laws, beginning in New
York State in 1973 and spreading across the country, was
a major contributor to the trend. Drug convictions were
heavily concentrated in inner cities—spaces largely excluded
from the “shared growth” of the immediate postwar
era. 39 African American men born between 1945 and
1949—a demographic concentrated in said areas—had a 10
percent probability of being imprisoned by the age of 34.
Among those born thirty years later, this likelihood rose to
27 percent. For white men, the probabilities were, respectively,
1.4 percent and 5.4 percent. 40
The CEA does not once use the words “crime,”
“prison,” or “incarceration” in its report. Admittedly,
these issues fall outside their stated purview. And yet,
this purview—assuming an economy with a traceable exterior—is
itself historically informed by inequalities of all
kinds. Received narratives of increasing participation in
the market should be read not simply alongside, but rather
within narratives of decreasing participation in civic life.
1.2.3.3 “The Age of Productivity Recovery (1995–2013)”
After decades of decreasing productivity and increasing
participation, the CEA credits the incorporation
of information technology for its most recent era of “productivity
recovery” and the concomitant improvements in
the stagnating economy. However, the CEA also notes that
income inequality worsened during this period—a trend
which began during the financialized, deregulated “Age of
Expanded Participation.” 41
Following through on tendencies from the previous
decade, welfare reform in the U.S. was one way that
the federal government sought to better capitalize on the
recent expansion of the marketplace while avoiding any
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