"Too much is at stake to leave architecture to architects"

The emotional and economic impacts of cities are closely connected, but this is lost in a proliferation of meaningless phrases like "healthy placemaking" and "human-centric design", says Reinier de Graaf.
The built environment affects us all. It is the common opening line of every conference about architecture. Elitist in the 1970s, forgotten in the 80s, rediscovered in the 90s, idolised in the 00s, architecture today mostly registers as a cause for concern, a discipline insufficiently