Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book frames its contemporary commentary in the historical ideological constructions of the United States, tracing out the Federal Government's economic rationale of the 19th Century Land Ordinance and the normalizing agenda embedded in the advocacy of Neoclassical architecture by the Founding Fathers. It conceptualizes the correlation between property ownership and individual freedom as a State informed exercise that, under the 2000–2008 George Walker Bush administration, took on a 'racially profiled' form. The book considers the emergence and use of Trump Tower as a form of populist political icon in the 2016 Presidential campaign. It concerns the use of architecture in imagery for purely electoral ends, rather than paralleling its consideration of the effects of this imagery with associated implications for the built environment.