scholar-speak: "Structural Integrity" (the City)

The idea that contemporary architects have abandoned urban design 
wholesale is something of a polemical exaggeration. "Especially in 
developing countries, there are architects who are interested in 
building flexible structures and low-cost housing for the poor," says 
Susan Fainstein, a professor of urban design at Harvard's Graduate 
School of Design. "But in terms of the United States and Europe," she 
says, echoing Glazer, "the so-called starchitects reign supreme" -- and 
their goal is largely to create singular works of art.

The swing away from the austere modernist credo -- form follows 
function, all else is decadence -- was inevitable, Glazer concedes. But 
that aesthetic development didn't have to be combined with a flight from 
urban planning, although the two issues are intertwined in complex ways.

For one thing, persistent public ambivalence toward modern and 
postmodern architecture -- despite some popular successes -- has spawned 
an unproductive elitism in the design profession, Glazer contends.



cont'd....
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/03/18/structural_integrity/?page=full