11–20 of 148 posts
If you have one guy calling all the shots, then he will necessarily have a very abstract and simplified view and use simple patterns like straight lines and rectangles. There just isn't time for complexity.
If everyone has their own little piece to design and evolve as they see fit, then they will take into account the local factors and nuances.
Weird, the masthead photo is the street where I grew up. Now clogged with people lining up to Instagram, sadly. Plus nobody lives there anymore, really - they are all the owners’ vacation homes.
tl;dr - human instinct guides us to prefer aesthetics with a certain "fractal dimension" (measure of repeating patterns across scales, ranging from 1.0-2.0) that mirrors the dimensions found in nature: 1.3-1.5
This sort of symmetry is the signature of living and biodiverse places. We are hardcoded to prefer it, through deep history.
My read on this is that we're finding solace in manufactured landscapes that fall within this range, and nooks help create this balance of chaos and order. The places we build outside this range subtly increase our stress.
The place I've visited where this struck me most, was Juifen, the Taiwanese mountain town that inspired Spirited Away. Walking through the long market "tunnel" was like walking along a forest path -- you'd look up and there's be many layers of canopy and hanging vines and accreted layers of human intervention. It felt so organic and layers and mentally energizing. https://www.tofugu.com/travel/jiufen-spirited-away/
Disclaimer: failed biochemist and evolutionary geneticist.
I think it's about power. If you have one guy calling all the shots, then he will necessarily have a very abstract and simplified view and use simple patterns like straight lines and rectangles. There just isn't time for complexity. If everyone has their own little piece to design and evolve as they see fit, then they will take into account the local factors and nuances.
Basically, she spent 4 decades disproving the "tragedy of the commons" in a whole set of defined cases, showing that a group of people DON'T selfishly destroy a commons when looking after it. She codified the requirements for a group of people properly governing a shared place/resource. Two of the 8 key requirements were 1) Local autonomy; 2) Appropriate relations with other tiers of rule-making authority (polycentric governance).
aka, powers must not be pulled too far from the place in which they are executed. to the extent that we need to seek efficiencies, system should offer through support from above to operate more efficiently (e.g., offer services and "kits" to self-manage). DO NOT CENTRALIZE OR CONSOLIDATE POWER.
Of course, the above recommendations can be discarded, but then collective governance fails, and keeping commonses alive and vibrant requires more and more central support systems to prevent its failure. Her rules are who you'd follow if you wanted decentralized and resilient governance structures and patterns.
[1]: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/
“Modernism is the problem!” harrumphed the American Conservative, forgetting as usual that X was also once very modern. ◔_◔
Earlier quoted context omitted.
On addition some narrow alleyways are a bit dangerous —they are narrow and in the event of emergency they can find themselves blocked off (when fire escapes empty to them, as they usually do).
If a modern developer doesn't address liabilities first, they would quickly be out of business. Hence, design is restricted to the parameters of what one can successfully defend if sued. Fire departments and fire codes are especially difficult to design around in tight spaces, as they can basically veto any construction that doesn't allow ample room for fire trucks to get around. The city also doesn't want to get sue…
Edit: I looked into it further: MGM was insured for 751M for the payout and I suppose they figured an additional 100M to get it out of their hair was worth it. The existence of a settlement doesn't create a precedent, but I worry about these incremental movements towards a society where there is some expectation of invasive tracking.
As often is the case, cars are the elephant in the room. In the alley? We have rebuilt our urban spaces for cars instead of people. Now we wonder at what we've lost but have trouble connecting it to the automobile because t's ubiquitous and most of us can't imagine it otherwise.
We're obviously living in some of the safest times there's ever been, but that probably plays on some minds (alongside the "it's more efficient to build straight lines" part).
“Modernism is the problem!” harrumphed the American Conservative, forgetting as usual that X was also once very modern. ◔_◔
They're not ranting against semiconductors or antibiotics (both also relatively modern), are they?