Chicago Tribune: Obama puts spotlight on nation's infrastructure

From Chicago Tribune:

The age of the architectural icon-that extravagant, exuberant, "wow"-inducing building on a pedestal-is dead, or more precisely, in its death throes. And what will replace it? President Barack Obama, who once dreamed of being an architect, had something to say about that Tuesday in his inaugural address: the age of infrastructure. Rarely do events so boldly bracket the death of one design era and the dawning of another as they have in recent days. On Jan. 14, the developer of a kilometer-high skyscraper in the Persian Gulf playground of Dubai announced he was shelving the project, the mixed-use Nakheel Tower, which would have been as tall as three John Hancock Centers stacked atop one another. Then, six days later, Obama issued his blueprint for recovery: The nation "will act-not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth," he said. "We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together."