Scarcity contra Austerity (Design Observer)

"We live in an age of austerity; or, rather, we are told that we live in an age of austerity. In the United States and throughout Europe, austerity is presented as a necessary stricture, and the mantra “cuts now, growth later” is repeated so steadily that it seems an inevitability, with consequences ranging from the personal (shortened shopping lists) to the public (cutbacks in major civic projects). As a discipline that spans the private-public spectrum, architecture inevitably is bound to this new regime, and so it is not surprising that the machinations of economic austerity are being played out in the mainstream of contemporary building."