[Tom Cluff]

I was at a conference a couple of years ago where, in an aside, one of the speakers told a story about how he and a fellow student (back in the 80s) read through every word of every issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine from the 20s and 30s. It turns out that the magazine did not contain a single mention of the Great Depression (or anything related to the depression-era economy, for that matter) until the late 30s (1936, I think).

So, ASLA’s been derelict on this matter before.

[Tom Cluff]

No, no one has these statistics. I’ve been looking at doing a master’s thesis related to the impact of the economic downturn on the profession, but there is so little in the way of reliable data that even designing a research proposal is a exercise in frustration.

The closest you could get to data that might give you a peek at what’s happened to the profession is ASLA’s quarterly survey. However, the real data behind that survey isn’t available unless you buy it and, given the laughable spin ASLA puts on the press releases that accompany the dribble of results they do release, I doubt they really want anybody doing independent analysis of the responses.

A close proxy for reliable data is some internal reporting that the CEO Roundtable does for their meetings. Even if they wanted to, they can’t release that data because of Anti-Trust Act restrictions. Sometimes you can talk to one of the people on the roundtable and get them to tell you — in broad generalities — what’s happened to the profession, but nothing that you could run your own analysis on. Or even reliably cite.

Unfortunately, the broad generalities that they can tell you are bad. Very, very bad. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60+% employment shrinkage in the profession. That doesn’t take into account the large number of LAs who lost a job, went home and hung out a shingle for themselves, so it’s reasonable to think that the profession hasn’t truly lost 60% of it’s practitioners, this is merely what a limited (and decidedly non-representative) sample of still-functioning firms are reporting. Nor does that 60% equate to anywhere near 60% fewer firms as it’s more likely that a firm would hang on with two or three people (where they had 20 or so) rather than close outright. (The truly scary thing here is that this 60+% number comes from earlier this year when things seemed like they were turning around and no one had mentioned the possibility of a double-dip recession.)

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On the thread topic: Among all the costs that a working firm bears, the salaries of your people are so far and away the largest that the difference in cost between a plush downtown office space and some drab strip-mall horror isn’t going to matter when the money stops coming in. Regardless of what firm management spent their money on when the times were good, once the economy tanks there is no other cost saving measure, either before or during the downturn, that can save them from having to layoff employees for whom they don’t have work. 

[Tom Cluff]

@James ivy – Thanks for the response. Your answer is very helpful. It is also the closest to what I was after in starting this discussion. I wonder though, would it be possible for you to estimate totals for the questions in my post? I’m sorry if I’m imposing.

@ Nick Aceto – It’s unfortunate that they seem like rhetorical questions. I’m really trying to get a better handle on the state of affairs.

As I mentioned, no one tracks unemployment specifically for the LA profession. My questions are intended to elicit responses along the lines of James Ivy’s. The more comprehensive the better. I want this information, but it just isn’t available anywhere that I’ve been able to find. I’m not quite to the point that I’m ready to do my own survey to find out what real employment numbers are (I don’t have any need that justifies that sort of cost), but I would like something a little better than I’ve been able to run across so far. These questions are intended to be a sort of “pre-survey test” where, if I can get enough responses – and if those responses are broad enough – I can estimate the parameters of what I’d get if I did actually survey for this data.

So, I realize I am asking a lot of people; think of all the LAs you know, then answer the questions as best you can. I also realize the results aren’t going to be very robust. But, even if the results aren’t a true picture of the carnage in the profession, it would still be a better picture than the narrow anecdotal slices most of us are relying on presently.
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Everyone else: I understand the frustration over people working for free. I seem to remember seeing other discussions on Land8 about this topic though. If we need to talk about it on this thread, I’m fine with that. But could we also try and answer the questions I started with? I think this info would be nice to have for more than just myself.

[Tom Cluff]

Sometimes “progressive” is just a buzzword that people use to deflect criticism. As in, “This project will be built using principles of Progressive Urbanism, so if you aren’t supporting it, you must be against good design.”

Otherwise, as the term has been used, I don’t see anything to distinguish the design principles of one from the other. Good, sensible attempts to make the places we live function better at the human-scale.

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