The Unemployment Rate For Landscape Architects/Designers

[mauiBob]

No job security? Tell that to Dan Inouye, Hawaiian Senator since 1954!!

I’m just being a little dramatic, Craig. LA not dead…yet. LOL. Example: I’m looking at a plan right now of a proposed new development on Maui. Kihei high school plan has no landscape architect on board. Just Arch and Civil. The architect did all the fancy graphics, concept and site plans. This is the worst I’ve seen it in my 12 years of practice. 

Get ready, Craig. By early 2016 there will be an avalanche of projects at your doorstep. Hang in there long enough to see it, then prepare for the crash in 2021.

[ida]

Funny how nearly every type of car is perfectly identical in shape, size, color, and rotation. If you look closely you can see some cars have no shadow or little shadow compared to it’s neighbor. I also don’t know of a freeway that large in Shanghai. It’s a photoshoped image…

  

Though I’m sure China has many environmental problems, they still consume considerably a lot less and pollute a lot less than us Americans per capita. And though a lot of people have cars and traffic can be a nightmare in the big cities, many more are using public transit, walking, or commuting by bicycle. How do I know this? I currently live in Beijing. They’ve just opened up 3 new subway lines in Beijing last year and are scheduled to open and expand more this year.

 

I grew up in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, so I can say from my own experience that So Cal is much worse than any city that I’ve been to in China.

 

Once China has a Costco where everyone buys in bulk or a trenta- sized Starbucks cup, then I would start to worry.

[Jason T. Radice]

Depends on the county around here, but many times both the architect or civil engineer can stamp landscape plans.

[Anonymous]

You just let old Danny Boy get exposed by images showing him doing something naughty, he’ll be out of there before you know it.

 

Projects without LAs on board are nothing new. Who said being an LA was easy. Let a couple of Architects fake and fumble their way through a couple of site plans while the economy is tight. When business picks up they’ll be calling LAs to do the site design again, because they’ll realize they can’t do it as well and most importantly as efficiently as an LA. The average LA will smoke the average Architect or Civil every time when it comes to site design. Just get the projects going and I’ll continue to make a living being a Landscape Architect.  

 

mauiB I’m preparing for the next crash as I try to survive this one. The plan is to make enough money during the next boom to make it through the next bust.

[Anonymous]

Ha…Look at the tree in the foreground!

 

This is the ‘hood in your head where you earned your stripes. I never would have imagined you would stoop so low. mauiB you have lost all credibility. This is a sad day in America.

[mauiBob]

Ida and Craig: 

If you would Goggle “China highways” and use the images tab to show you the horrific traffic jams in the country! You live in Beijing, Ida? Follow the link below and even L.A. has never seen this bad of smog! I think all the pollution is beginning to cloud your brain cells! Nice way of making a living by being a traitor! Sure you can live in America and sell products to China, but not live there and help build that country. How do you look in the mirror? Talk about photoshop, your profile reads San Fran, but you say you live in Beijunk! And don’t forget…China hasn’t seen the worst since many of the population is yet to own cars. Just wait for another 10 years.

http://www.dailysquib.co.uk/world/1138-china-4-mph-road-speed-limit…

[mauiBob]

Craig, be sure to read my comment above to Ida who lives in Beijing but profile reads San Fran. Did I mention, he’s also a traitor? He shouldn’t be allowed back into the States!

[Anonymous]

mauiB you sound like you’re rattled.

 

How can you accuse someone that goes to China to make a check doing a few planting, and grading and drainage plans of being a traitor? Now that’s just silly. Would they be better off here in the States with empty pockets while our leaders squash major projects? Now just stop it.

 

Funny that first image looks like Queens.

[Keith]

For anyone working in China, if you get laid off I hear North Korea and Iran are hiring LA’s.  Just a tip. 

[Anonymous]

HILLARIOUS! …but keep your day job.

[ida]

My profile is false to protect my identity and my company’s identity. I doubt your real name is Maui Bob.

There are a lot of foreigners working in China as consultants simply because Chinese clients regard foreigners as experts. I know many who are sustainability consultants providing knowledge to local designers and developers, and, getting paid top dollar for it. Some live in US and travel to China for business trips, btw.

Rather than seeing yourself as a Marine under heavy fire, perhaps you can put your education to use and offer your knowledge. You seem to know a lot about traffic and Google, so why not help the East and solve their traffic issues? Their pollution does travel across the ocean to America, so helping them will help clean up American air too.

 

China, Mexico, Iran, North Korea, it doesn’t matter where as long as you can make a project sustainable, no? We all share the same damn world anyways.

[Anonymous]

Checkmate.

[Boilerplater]

Good point Ida.  I recently started reading my 2nd book by Thomas Friedman, “Hot, Flat and Crowded” to better understand globalism.  The pollution produced in China affects the climate for all of us.  The demand for oil in China affects the price of gas in the US.  If there is anything useful we can export, it is sutainable design expertise.  Millions (Billions?) of Chinese trying to live like suburban Americans with be a disaster for the environment and bring Peak Oil so much sooner, if it hasn’t passed already.  Instead of just planning Western-style subdivisions, we should be promoting TODs and co-housing.  Let them learn from our mistakes instead of repeating them.  We’ve made a mess of our cities.  The endgame of industrialization for many US regions has been rust-beld decay, crime and poverty.  Why repeat that?

[alland]

Right on, Craig…even though most or all of us in ACE industry are indeed sucking wind, the infrastructure is falling apart, as noted by the Reinvestment and Recovery Act, which had little effect in 2008-09. The only real substantial work right now for AEC is in public utility improvement or maintence. How do LAs fit in? Everywhere (the old sustainability issue) and or nowhere? Im not sure. The utility services industry will spend the money when it comes down to liability….they will rebuild…..but when?

[landplanner]

Very cogent and informed observations boilerplater. And take that from someone who is over in China and would like nothing more than to be associated with projects like you mention in your posting. The true fact of that matter is, that I have been directly and functionally involved and contributing to those kinds of projects, right here in the good old USofA, when we were actually planning, designing and building them. Those days are not gone, but are now numbered and being

rationed.

As for China, it is a mixed bag dim sum here. On the upside, this country does have a national energy policy and program that they are dead serious about carrying out. It involves aggressive

transformation to alternative energy sources (solar, wind etc) and nuclear. It also involves going after every conceivable source and supply of dwindling fossil fuels left on this planet as we know it.

China, does also talk a good game of going green in terms of “new urbanism” and other manisfestations as we know them here in the states. The frank fact of the matter is that China builds high density as general default. What it does not build enough of is affordable and accessible housing for the masses (sound familiar ?) and their masses are in multiples that you can barely get your numerical head around. As far as my limited vision has allowed me (what I have seen on the ground) already dense and concentrated development does not take place in any greater multiplier (as it should) around transit, such as high speed rail, which we do not have one inch of in our own country, but China has more miles of than any country on earth now, and will continue to.

An incredible contradiction, paradox and confusing puzzle of a country. Sound familiar ?

[Author]

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