Governance: Part III: Architecture, Land, Currency & Agency

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Troy Chavez
March 31, 2025

The power of architectural design is in what it represents. Like a piece of art, we view it in an almost mystical light. We see the curves, edges and smooth stone and feel the energy and culture teeming through it. For centuries, societies have used architecture to project strength, vitality, growth, progress, power and cultural identity. A way to tell the world “Who we are” and “what we stand for!” Frank Loyd Wright once said, “The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own, we have no soul of our own civilization.”

Architecture & Land

When we think of cities like New York or Los Angeles, we recall landmarks, skyscrapers, bustling streets, classical Roman/Greek designs and sunny or dark and mysterious landscapes. We think of the appeal first. The sites. The sounds. The possibility.

My grandmother once said while living in San Francisco that the “city makes me feel alive!” The electricity of a city in full bloom—night or day—is a sight to see. However, that is me and my grandma’s opinion on city life. This does not consider life on the range or in small towns, beach towns, mountain towns, etc. Culture influences space and produces spurring mental images.   

These images we conjure are more than marketing. It is us seeing the soul of a city laid bare and naked for all to see and feel. However, some souls are dark, happy, sad, manic or somewhere in between. Meaning, not all cities shine atop a hill. Cities are alive. They have feelings, emotions and combust when pushed to the limits. Cities are an extension of humanity. A machination of human ingenuity and progress. These are sacred meeting spaces that if unfurled like a scroll, would roll for miles upon miles. History never leaves us.

A reporter, Michelle Johnson in an article for USA Today describes her experience visiting a slave home her family were once held. “They had taken the slave cabin and pieced it together with this old kitchen and use it as a guesthouse now,” Johnson said. “There was a ladder leaning up against it and they told us to the enslaved persons working there would have used it to up to the second level…I wondered if any of my relatives would have been there. Would they have worked in that kitchen? To be in that space where some of them might have been was really moving.”

The same could be said for walking through a long-lost familial residence or ancestral town whereby you never knew existed. However, a city is a stage set for actors to intermingle, produce and play. Who writes this play?

Currency & Agency

The architecture of a city is drawn out from city and/or county budgets, local cultural deployments and regional needs/visions. However, federal and state governments alternatively have budgets and “agency.” For local governments, this dynamic greatly influences their ability to tackle new programs and initiatives. The illustrious buildings I spoke about needed to be funded, planned and built. This took resources and coordination between private and public actors. “Rome was not built in a day,” as they say.

American governments work together on myriad issues and projects, but the easiest way to illustrate this coordination is by using infrastructure as an example. The “agency” (meaning, the demand) for infrastructure projects is generally broadly approved and accepted. Agency comes in the form of a community need put into action. If there is not enough housing, they build more houses or lower living costs. For dwindling healthcare in the region, they construct more facilities and hospitals—or expand health insurance at the state or federal level. When there aren’t senior services or centers for an aging population, counties and cities budget, then construct them. They also have long-term plans, and/or “comprehensive plans.” They are often entitled with a particular region or municipality and attach “vision 2028” or something equivalent. These can be found on city or county websites.

Currency and capital are the drivers of these initiatives. Without proper financing, a city can’t build that new tram or additional buses. That funding is acquired via federal and state grants. This trichotomy is always at play: city/county, state and federal.

Our decentralized system is by design and can be confusing for anyone looking outside a city, county or federal building on the same street or neighborhood block….These differing bezels of governance work in tandem, against or somewhere in between, every day. This is how our government works. By no means is this exhaustive. There are volumes of books on governance. Yet, even as a public administrative professional and intellectual, I am amazed at the complexity engulfed in one city, county and state—let alone the behemoth the Trump Administration is concurrently tackling: the federal government.

Ultimately, in my eyes, local culture drives most initiatives. Governance is all encompassing and involves any actor willing to participate. How will you get involved? Why do you want to get involved? What do you see that governments don’t? WE are governance.

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Author: Troy Chavez, M.P.A. is a PhD candidate at Liberty University with a masters in public administration and works in government doing community relations. He can be reached at [email protected].

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