Unfrozen

Jesse M. Keenan is the Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Tulane University. In his upcoming book North: The Future of Post-Climate America, he outlines the complexities of America’s handling of climate change and its effects on not only migration, mitigation, and real estate, but also our institutions and societal fabric. Simultaneous conclusions: There are no climate havens, but adapt we will. Join us for the fascinating Unfrozen interview.

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Intro/Outro: “System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank report on reversal of the migration to the Sun Belt

“What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century” - The Atlantic

Climate gentrification: from theory to empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida

Sean Becketti, Freddie Mac, April 2016: Will Markets Absorb Climate Change?

A Climate Minsky Moment?

Mitigation vs adaptation vs resilience

Rachel Minnery’s efforts at the AIA to include climate adaptation as part of architects’ standards and duty of care

“Climate-proof Duluth” in the New York Times

There were never any climate havens: The Guardian

The lesson of Asheville: The flooding was the beginning of its role as a “receiving zone,” not the end

“Climate havens” = media clickbait

Marketing of Buffalo as a “climate haven” by Mayor Byron R. Brown

Alan Mallach’s Unfrozen take on reviving legacy cities

“This is about growth management and urban planning 101 at the regional and local level”

For many “climate havens” rhetoric is not about recruiting new residents; climate mobility is a rhetorical arm for the existing residents for core sustainability development.

“The Midwest will ultimately grow for the exact same reason the Sun Belt grew”

Storming the Wall by Todd Miller

The Climate Credit Score

Hurricane Pass, Pinellas County, Florida

“Sodom & Gorlando”

Climate intelligence arms race, e.g., AlphaGeo

Spencer Glendon – “The money is slow and dumb”

Just in time for Halloween comes a spooky story of speculation and specters in the world of real estate. Joshua Comaroff, a professor at National University of Singapore, is the author of Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore. He tells Unfrozen that, despite being one of the most assertively modern nations in the world, mysticism and geomancy are very much part of the design and construction process in the island nation-state. Woe be to the development (and its occupants) that does not undertake elaborate rituals and pay the requisite respect (and sometimes burnt “hell money” offerings) to ghosts that may be resident on the site. We hope you enjoy this tale of spirits and the material world…

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Hell money, in sextillion-dollar denominations

Feng shui

People’s Action Party

Ghost Month (Ghost Festival)

Bomoh (Malay spirit doctor)

Winchester Mystery House

ION Orchard

Gateway, by I.M. Pei

AI Ghosts

John Calvin’s hatred of speculation

The Clayford Sisters

Thanatechnology

Depending on how you look at it, it is either a great or rough time out there for speculative fiction, as reality continues to bite at the heels of even the most dystopian visions. Jason Tester is a futurist with a knack for telling prescient stories about our imminent urban realities, in a startlingly graphic way. The visually compelling Insurrection: an American Future predicted troop deployments in San Francisco in early January 2025; by June, a real-life version of that story began unfolding in Los Angeles, then Washington, Chicago, and Portland. Tester gazes into the abyss with Unfrozen, in another episode a bit too close for comfort.

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Intro/Outro:
“System Error,” by The Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Institute for the Future

What Is The Insurrection Act? Here’s What Happens If Trump Invokes Law

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Frogs of Portland

Ilana Lipsett

Meta Ray-Bans

Frend.AI

ImmigrationOS

San Francisco Proposition E - Police drone authorization

The beleaguered Whole Foods on Market

ICE Ramming in Chicago

Grand juries say no to sandwich crimes

DDS Waymo Jam

Barbara Walter at UC San Diego: How Civil Wars Start

Abyss gazing

UrbanistAI

One Big Beautiful Bill

One Big Beautiful Aftermath

Rem Koolhaas is nothing if not enigmatic, which makes him and his first major built work, the Villa dal’Alva, Paris (1990), an ideal first subject of the “Gumshoe” series of architectural mysteries. Cutting through the conventions of academic jargon and trade press, The House of Dr. Koolhaas reopens the “cold case” of Koolhaas and examines evidence in a pulp-detective novel format. Unfrozen turns the lamp back on writer/editor team Francoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver.

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Gumshoe Architectural Mystery Series

Thomas Weaver (AA Files)

Villa d’Alva, OMA

S, M, L, XL

Luis Bunuel

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

Mannerism

Madelon Vreisendorp with Teri Wehn-Damisch: The Film of Delirious New York

Countryside, The Future

Dali’s paranoiac-critical method

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Next up: Oscar Neimayer’s Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, by Littell Shaw

Then: The Parthenon

Then: Case Study House by Craig Ellwood

Poelzig’s I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt

Raymond Chandler

James Ellroy

Dismayed by the destruction and death in Gaza? Fear not, the wizards at Boston Consulting Group have a plan – a 38-slide deck that will Make Gaza GREAT Again. It’s a molten nugget of consultant-speak, SimCity planning moves, weirdly proportioned AI slop renderings, and tokenized real estate transactions that place a thin veil of “solutioneering” over what looks an awful lot like ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry – it will all be covered by private investment and all kinds of familiar corporations in the tech, design, construction and security businesses are invited, whether they know it or not. Our hot take on this hottest of messes.

Discussed:

Washington Post article
Wall Street Journal article
Financial Times article
GREAT Trust deck
Pre-GREAT Trust Hebrew version of the deck
Gaza Riviera TikTok video
Scarlett Johansson on SNL: Complicit
Boston Consulting Group
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
Tony Blair Institute
Ebenezer Howard
Baron von Haussmann
SimCity
Paul Romer’s Charter Cities
Shout back to Episode 92, The Hidden Globe
AECOM
Studio Boeri Architetti
IMEC = India-Middle East Corridor
UN rapporteur communique on Gaza report: Economy of Occupation to an Economy of Genocide