SHUBOW

A new Trump administration council that will determine federally-funded transportation infrastructure projects are visually-pleasing enough to get government support meets for the first time Monday.

The Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council will advise U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy on the aesthetics of the nation's planned bridges, roads, highways, airports, and transit hubs.

The group's work could impact a host of Chicago projects such as the O'Hare Airport expansion, Union Station improvements and the planned North Lake Shore Drive redo.

USDOT has a $100 billion budget.

Architecture critic Justin Shubow was named chairman of the eight member council, the Department of Transportation announced last Monday.

Shubow is also president of the National Civic Art Society, the Washington D.C. nonprofit that helped write President Donald Trump's "Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again," executive order that seeks to have new U.S. government buildings designed in past rather than modern or contemporary styles.

"I think a lot of the American landscape is soulless and ugly," Shubow told me. "I don't think we're building bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge anymore ... or look at Chicago: the magnificence of the DuSable Bridge [at Michigan Avenue], of Beaux Arts design, with reliefs carved into it. I mean, there's a reason why that bridge is in so many iconic photos of the city."

Make Infrastructure Great Again?

At nearly any other time in this nation's history, having a something like the Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council would be a good thing on its face.

Airports and train stations have seen design improvements over the past decade — the rebirth of New York's LaGuardia Airport is a fine example — and we need more of them.

And driving the interstate highway system is indeed a soulless and ugly experience.

But the problem with the Trump administration focusing on infrastructure design is his overriding preference — as amplified in the executive order — for classical architectural styles.

It's an approach that cheapens design and reduces it to pastiche and visual dress-up; a paper-thin adjunct to Trump's "Make America Great Again" strategy that stands to shackle

good, thoughtful design instead of encouraging it.

Solving the aesthetics issue requires broad thinking, especially when it comes to the nation's roads.

"The engineering requirements [for road design] remain front and center, and they remain the primary drivers of design," transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University said.

"So adding aesthetics to the mix will require some fancy footwork," he said.

But Shubow said then road improvement projects don't have to be expensive.

"For instance, you can imagine a highway interstate where you plant wildflowers on the median," he said. "Some small thing that can be done that can actually have a bigger impact."

Shubow said the Beautifying Transportation Infrastructure Council is still figuring out if it will review individual projects, or develop guidelines that USDOT can apply to what gets funded by the agency.

And Chicago is certainly on the council's radar. Shubow praised the planned expansion of O'Hare's Terminal D.

"I'm very glad to see that it will include a great deal of trees and greenery," he said. "I think biophilia — people's love of nature — is something important for design. And it's another way to make otherwise hectic places much more livable."

Shubow called Union Station "one of the great train stations" in the country.

"I think people love seeing that space," he said. "And it's important that any renovation or overhaul of the station attempts to achieve that level."

Said Shubow: "Chicago has some of the greatest architecture in America, if not the world, and it would be fitting to have infrastructure that rises to that level."