Capital Stacks of Connection
by Mary-Margaret Zindren, EVP/Executive Director
When I was first hired by AIA Minnesota nine years ago, I excitedly picked up the Fifth Edition of Penguin’s Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. I did my best to take in the thousands of terms related to architecture and the built environment.
One term that wasn’t in that dictionary is one of the most consequential that I’ve needed to learn about: “capital stack.”
As you all know (because your learning has extended well beyond dictionaries to real life in architecture), a capital stack is the set of financing instruments pulled together to fund a real estate project. Each layer of the stack has its own potential risks and returns. The particularities of a capital stack shape the architectural solutions supported by financiers and owners, and influences the success of the project in both the short and long term.
A different sort of capital – the “social capital” Jane Jacobs championed; the network of relationships that further mutual trust, shared effort toward common purposes, and resilience in times of challenge – also matters to the work architecture, and the work of simply being a citizen. Specifically, the social capital layers of “bonding capital” and “bridging capital.”
The time we invest in others who are most like us – who think like us, live like us, share our tastes and affinities, share our political affiliations – is the bonding capital that feels easy; comfortable; low-risk. For the many people in today’s society who are experiencing loneliness, focusing on bonding connections is a great place to start. The returns of bonding capital are reinforcing, making us feel confident, solid, and seen.
The time we invest in connecting with others who are less like us – where one or more key dimensions of who they are, how they live their lives, how they think about politics differs from ourselves – is the bridgingcapital that keeps associations, neighborhoods, and nations going strong over decades and centuries.
The book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam – which focused on the negative societal impacts of the decline of involvement in social clubs, religious institutions, and recreational leagues that had long bolstered both bonding and bridging capital – was published nearly 25 years ago this year. Journalists have started to look back on what that book documented and what it warned against/foretold: an increasing loss of trust in each other and in our institutions.
Our society by most measures has moved further and further apart over the past two decades. Our news and our popular media consumption is dramatically more fractured and siloed. People of differing political affiliations, especially at the far ends of the continuum, are described by researchers as not simply disagreeing with each other but seeing each other as evil; not seeing each other as human.
By our everyday actions, we seem to be regularly investing in a limited social capital stack made up primarily of bonding capital and seeing it as low-risk and high reward. But the rewards to be gained from adding a strong layer of bridging capital are many – despite, or actually because of, the higher risk.
Connecting with individuals within our architecture community and beyond who have differing, even diametrically opposed, worldviews compared to our own can be incredibly difficult to do. And these days it feels especially hard to sustain these connections over time.
AIA Minnesota plays an essential role in creating and sustaining connection within our architecture community. It can be easy to think of what we cultivate as primarily bonding capital, but stacked atop that base layer of commonality among architects are different types of bridging capital that we also work to facilitate – where we create opportunities for people who see themselves as very different from each other, or differ greatly in their views on issues they feel passionate about, to come together around shared purpose, get to know each other, learn from each other, and appreciate each other.
Connections matter; both connections based on similarity and connections across difference. Through the programs and efforts of AIA Minnesota and the local chapters we aim to foster both types of connections. When truly invested in, the ripple effects of making these connections can be felt far beyond the architecture community and building industry to our broader society. If there was ever a time to double down on the capital stack of connection, that time is now.
How does – and how might – AIA Minnesota create connections for you? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please reach out at zindren@aia-mn.org.
