Architecture in a critical time: Glimpses from Jeanne Gang a paper by Greg Lindsay

I just posted, in ULGC Tumblr, some glimpses of a paper on Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang written by Greg Lindsay on The Wall Street Journal online. But, continuing my reading, I found Gang's statement in the right path of my previous posts on architecture in a depressed economy. Below an abstract of Lindsay's paper:

Rendered view of Northerly Island ı Creating an Ecological Urban Habitat | © Studio Gang
> Anticipated Phase I announced to be completed by 2015

We're at the end of a boom that demanded architects focus on iconic buildings that prized shape over structure and form. On the plus side, it pushed forward our understanding of both. Some of the buildings completed in the last 10 years would not have been possible at any other time in history. The fact the Burj Khalifa in Dubai exists blows my mind — it's just awesome. But now we're at the dawn of a new mode of work requiring cross-collaboration, and somebody who can see all the different facets of a problem is critical. We see it in science all the time, where none of the most important problems can be tackled by a single discipline.
For our work exploring the future of suburbia, we asked, "How can we deal with a polluted postindustrial landscape while making room for more residents and giving them space to both live and work?" In Cicero, a Chicago suburb with thousands of foreclosures and a booming immigrant population, we interviewed local residents, real-estate developers, housing, immigration and financial-policy experts and even the owners of the freight rail lines that run through town. I assembled a team that knew their way around the suburbs, including people like Theaster Gates, an artist who knows how to start dialogues with communities. We synthesized our ideas into a proposal: select an abandoned factory site, salvage its materials and reuse them to build à la carte housing that better fits the needs of extended immigrant families. The project is a completely new way of envisioning the suburbs, integrating all aspects of life instead of separating them into live, work and play.
Architects have a powerful role to play in solving some of society's most pressing issues, like urbanization. The design of a city can either make life exciting or pure hell. I think we have something important to offer. That's probably one reason a lot of us at Studio Gang still work into the late hours of the night. What drives us is the possibility of making a breakthrough. That's my adrenaline: To think that, one of these nights, we might end up changing the world.

Plan of Northerly Island | © Studio Gang

Click on the link to access to the entire paper.