ARCHITECTURE

To study the architecture of housing in this way is therefore
also to study the architecture of inequality that pervades
American cities and American landscapes. It is not
too much to say that, as a necessary component in the technique
of governing that we have been describing—namely,
the technique of governing through inequality—architecture
also governs. It does so subtly and discreetly, less
through monumental symbols or monolithic institutions
than through the everyday practices by which houses and
apartments are designed, built, bought, sold, and financed.
Under these conditions, architecture is imagined first and
foremost as an investment, the returns on which are by
definition to be unevenly distributed. Thinking and making
it otherwise remains a fundamental, unmet challenge
for our times.
1. I use the term “capital” here in its narrower sense, as used by Thomas Piketty to denote
wealth, or, as he puts it, “the sum total of nonhuman assets that can be owned and
exchanged on some market.” Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Arthur
Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 46.
2. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our
Future, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2012), 133.
3. Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” Vanity Fair, May 2011, http://www.
vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105.
4. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality, 136.
5. Urban Land Institute, “ULI Case Studies: New York by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street” (November
2014), http://uli.org/publications/case-studies/.
6. Ibid., 3–4.
7. NYCHDC, “HDC Closes on a 904-Unit Frank Gehry Designed Tower in Lower Manhattan,
Real Estate Rama,” April 1, 2008, Available at http://newyork.realestaterama.
com/2008/04/01/hdc-closes-on-a-904-unit-frank-gehry-designed-tower-in-lowermanhattan-ID0259.html,
and cited in Urban Land Institute, “ULI Case Studies: New York
by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street,” 4.
8. Ibid., 5.
9. Ibid., 9.
10. “New York by Gehry,” accessed August 8, 2015, http://www.newyorkbygehry.com/
the-building.
11. Urban Land Institute, “ULI Case Studies: New York by Gehry at 8 Spruce Street,” 7.
12. Ibid., 7.
13. Ibid., 5.
14. Ibid., 10.
15. Carmen DeNavas-Walt and Bernadette D. Proctor, “Income and Poverty in the United
States: 2013,” U.S. Census Bureau (September 2014), 5, https://www.census.gov/content/
dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf.
16. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 265.
17. Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, tables 7.1–3, 247–249.
18. Ibid., 260.
19. “2013 American Housing Survey for the United States—Complete Set of Tables and
Standard Errors,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed August 18, 2015, http://www2.census.gov/
programs-surveys/ahs/2013/AHS_2013_National_Tables_v1.2.xls.
20. For data on individuals, see Wojciech Kopczuk, Emmanuel Saez and Jae Song, “Earnings
Inequality and Mobility in the United States: Evidence from Social Security Data Since
1937,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 125, no. 1 (2010): 91–128.
21. “GINI Index (World Bank estimate),” World Bank, accessed August 9, 2015, http://data.
worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI. Indices vary somewhat according to methods
used and underlying data sources. Thus, according to the Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the same year, the U.S. Gini index was .380,
with those of most other countries proportionately lower as well. See “Income Distribution
and Poverty,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, accessed
August 9, 2015, http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=IDD.
22. “Income Distribution and Poverty,” Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
accessed August 9, 2015, http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=IDD.
23. “Metadata on OECD Income Distribution Database (IDD),” Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, accessed August 9, 2015, http://www.oecd.org/social/
soc/IDD-Metadata.pdf; See also “Current Population Survey: A Joint Effort Between
the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.
census.gov/cps/.
24. “Current Population Survey (CPS): Collecting Data,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed August
9, 2015, http://www.census.gov/cps/methodology/collecting.html.
25. Ibid. Methodologically, “household” is defined as follows: “A household consists of all the
people who occupy a housing unit. A house, an apartment or other group of rooms, or a
single room, is regarded as a housing unit when it is occupied or intended for occupancy
as separate living quarters; that is, when the occupants do not live with any other persons
in the structure and there is direct access from the outside or through a common hall. A
household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such
as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person
living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such
as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household. The count of households excludes
group quarters. There are two major categories of households, ‘family’ and ‘nonfamily’.”
26. “American Community Survey (ACS),” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed August 9, 2015, http://
www.census.gov/acs/www/; “History: Decennial Census,” accessed August 9, 2015, https://
www.census.gov/history/www/programs/demographic/decennial_census.html.
27. “American Housing Survey (AHS): Methodology,” U.S. Census Bureau, last revised
April 3, 2015, http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/about/methodology.html.
28. “American Housing Survey (AHS): About,” U.S. Census Bureau, last revised February 11,
2014, http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/about.html.
29. See Alex Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (New
York: Routledge, 2015 [2006]) for an overview of the past and present of U.S. housing
policy.
30. “American Housing Survey (AHS): About,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed August 9, 2015,
http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/about.html.
31. “5 Units Left in LOHA-Designed Condos in the Miracle Mile,” Curbed Los Angeles, June
10, 2013, accessed August 9, 2015, http://la.curbed.com/archives/2013/06/5_units_left_in_
lohadesigned_condos_in_the_miracle_mile.php.
32. “749 Cloverdale,” Top LA Condos, accessed August 9, 2015, http://www.toplacondos.
com/749-Cloverdale.
33. According to the U.S. Census, the median household net wealth of the top quintile (top
20 percent) was $630,754. Marina Vornovitsky, Alfred Gottschalck, and Adam Smith
“Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S.: 2000 to 2011,” 12, accessed August 9, 2015,
https://www.census.gov/people/wealth/files/Wealth%20distribution%202000%20
to%202011.pdf.
34. Robert Gebeloff and Shaila Dewan, “Measuring the Top 1% by Wealth, Not Income,” New
York Times, January 17, 2012, accessed August 9, 2015, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.
com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-top-1-by-wealth-not-income/?_r=0.
35. “Eden Prairie Woods,” Toll Brothers, accessed August 9, 2015, https://www.tollbrothers.
com/MN/Eden_Prairie_Woods.
36. “Pinhook Flats,” Alchemy Development, accessed August 9, 2015, http://www.pinhookflats.com.
37. “Aksarben Village by Broadmoor,” accessed August 9, 2015, http://www.broadmoor.cc/
apartments.aspx?cid=17.
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