Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs

Author:Jane Jacobs [Jacobs, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-307-36963-5
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2004-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Self-Policing Subverted

Members of learned professions have traditionally been regarded by themselves and others as capable of responsibly regulating, and even policing, themselves through oversight by bar associations, law societies, state boards of medicine, colleges of physicians and surgeons, medical associations, institutes of architects, engineering societies, institutes of certified or chartered accountants, and the like. These people not only enjoy status as educated experts; they are seen as establishment figures with stakes in maintaining stability, honesty, and good order for the common welfare. They are trusted to discipline or strip professional status from such frauds, brutes, and psychopaths as make their ways into high-minded professional ranks.

Historically, professional insistence on self-regulation, and social trust in professionals’ accountability, hark back to ancient priesthoods, probably the first learned societies. Priestly history echoes into modern times. Governments and priesthoods have often come into conflict over clerical demands for exemption from civil regulation, especially when clergies’ demands have overflowed into demands to prescribe or dictate for others too. This sort of conflict was at issue in the separation of the Anglican Church from the Roman Catholic Church under Henry VIII in England: it remains a very live issue in Israel and in some Islamic countries to this day.

Self-regulation and self-policing are different, although they overlap and blur. “Self-regulation” refers mainly to the internal affairs of professional groups. For example, architects’ professional institutes typically mandate the fees their members charge clients, with these customarily set at standard percentages of the total cost of projects, on a sliding scale. This is roughly realistic; the larger a project, the more work is usually entailed, from initial programming and design, through working drawings, specifications, tendering, and construction supervision. However, architects of outstanding originality and conscientiousness tend to lavish effort on small projects in amounts that render standard percentages unrealistic. As usual in life, one size does not fit all.

In many other commercial activities, mutually agreed-upon fees among competitors for clients would be deemed illegal collusion in restraint of trade. The architects’ rationale is that if fee shaving is eschewed as legitimate competition, then artistry, skill, and competence can be concentrated upon as competitive factors instead. In a field like architecture—part art, and also very much a matter of public safety and public amenity—competitive quality surely cannot be written off as a bad thing.

Another form of architects’ self-regulation is to ban criticism of another’s work, especially criticism that can be heard or read by outsiders. This is why one reads few critical reviews by architects of new buildings, in comparison with reviews by writers, say, of books, dramas, and film, or by musicians of musical compositions and performances. Architects’ mutual protection from adverse notice extends, when possible, to criticism by outsiders as well. When I was hired as an editor and writer by an architectural journal, the editor in chief gave me quickly to understand that I must shun critical comment. Otherwise, he explained, not only would our magazine stir up an unpleasant ruckus, but all architects, including those whose

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