On 'Urban' Infrastructure

Singular 'genius' works of architecture seem to be accomplished more easily in autocratic states with monopolist economies.  Evidently, when there are less chefs in the kitchen it is easier to push through more radical ideas with the intesity and speed of economy necessary to see them through to fruition. This is not new.  Look at the Constructivists in Communist Russia, or the appropriation of the Rationalists by Mussolini.  

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris failed to appeal to Paris' planning board, but succeeded in Chandigarh.  Kahn's most prolific work was done in Dhaka, not Connecticut.  CCTV went up in Beijing, while the WTC still languishes in bureacracy.

Inversely, democracies actually present a series of barriers to producing singular works of intrepid architecture.  Witness the aforementioned debacle of the WTC, or remember the recent block of Nouvel's tower at MoMA.  There are simply too many planning boards, municipal agencies and departments, historical preservation societies, community board meetings, for unconventional architecture to push forward undiluted.

However, these same barriers to singular works, are in place to ensure the quality of urban life and space as a knit fabric rather than for a select few.  

Recently Tom Mayne, has had the following to say about Dubai:

“There is no connected tissue,” he said. “It might work today, but the prognosis is not good for the future.

“It’s not going to work on many levels, from social to infrastructure and ecological. It’s going to be a disaster in ecological terms.

“The political class is no longer in charge of cities… which means there is no planning. Los Angeles is a prototype for that. The private sector rules. It takes hours to get downtown in LA as there is no public transport.”  <http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3124669&c=2>

Which leads to the following questions:  

If great works of heroic architecture must be supported by a hinterland of support infrastructure, that is obviously lacking in a place like Dubai, where is the tipping point when these works outstrip the urban resources needed to sustain them?  How long and under what circumstances can they last until the realization that a socially unsustainable construct is also an economic and ecological one?  [Remember the speculative fiasco of the "Palm Fronds," also in Dubai.]

If our best and brightest are interrested in architecture as a self-referential dialog, and are willing to acquiesce to unethical and unsustainable processes to accomplish that dialog, what does that say about the nature of the profession?  If architecture's supposed purpose is to benefit all who come in contact with it, where is the social contract in works of ego?  

Does architecture have a Hippocratic Oath?