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- Reading the list is worthwhile, however, if you’re curious about what contemporary city and regional governments are thinking—why they’re skimping on social programs and littering their skylines with gherkins and sinuous curving mounds and mirrored, tin man variations on Disney Hall. Architecture is everywhere on the list. Visit Abu Dhabi to see Gehry’s Guggenheim, Zaha Hadid’s Performing Arts Center, and Norman Foster’s Zayed National Museum. Go to Malta to bask in Renzo Piano’s renovations. In Uruguay, Rafael Viñoly designed “a gateway to the rustic countryside,” bridging the city and wine country, and it’s this last detail that’s the most telling. Viñoly got his start designing social housing, but now that neoliberal regimes have cut social spending, architecture has lost its public function. The job of today’s architect is to stuff the city with icons in a global bid for symbolic visibility, and it’s the job of the New York Times travel section to stare into junkspace and froth at the mouth, so tourists will too.