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What a sophomoric article. For example: > At first, the state just puts random names on the streets. This helps some, but the residents still colloquially go b
by theothermkn 7y ago
What a sophomoric article. For example:
> At first, the state just puts random names on the streets. This helps some, but the residents still colloquially go by the old terms they know, which causes problems for dispatch. Moreover, most of those alleys are still too narrow for ambulances to get through. The state decides on a more radical project: it’s going to plow through what it can and build new, ordered streets based on a grid. While they’re at it, they decide to make one commercial district and one residential district – it’s just a better system.
Just count the absurdities. "[T]he state just puts random names on the streets." Ludicrous. I mean, we can't even talk about this because we've lumped so many different things into the term, "state." To even begin thinking about this, we have to assume, as I'll do, a first-world democracy, for the sake of having something to talk about. I'd give even odds that in no first world democracy has "the state just [put] random names" on streets, especially where the residents have "old terms they know." Even if they did, how likely is it that no dispatcher would be, or know, a resident? How likely is complete ignorance on their part.
Then, we have: "The state decides on a more radical project: it’s going to plow through what it can and build new, ordered streets based on a grid." What? Here we can go quite a ways down the scale from "enlightened democracy" down toward "tin pot dictatorship" and we still strain credulity to think of a public welfare project where "the state" whimsically decides to "plow through what they can" and rebuild "based on a grid." (As evidenced, I suppose, by all the recently reordered neighborhoods on Google Maps, and by the news stories of the brand new kind of urban displacement that would entail.)
And they just "decide," "while they're at it," to rezone? Unlikely to the point of making one angry. It shocks the intellect.
The article is pablum, meant to rehearse a mushy market ideology so that a pathetic kind of know-it-all can feel better about their vaguely held lazy beliefs.
- nodemaker 7y agoI think the example was meant to be hypothetical and a bit absurd so that people can understand the point being made. There are enough real world examples of state intervention for the "common good" gone awry.
- kazagistar 7y agoWhen you take examples over the top, you are simply lying, because that is the difference between sensible choices made in reality and insane nonsense choices made in ideology tinted nonreality. And extrapolating examples globally is just as absurd... taking an exceptional mistake, and just assuming it's the status quo. These kind of bad mental shortcuts are the result of decades of propagandistic programming, not any kind of reflection of reality.
- ksdale 7y agoWhat is normal changes, what seems absurd today might be quite possible tomorrow. Besides that, there is the fact that "Authoritarian High Modernism" absolutely existed in the past century and resulted in all sorts of "insane nonsense choices" being made to the great detriment of millions of people.
- santoriv 7y agoSure, but the author should have relied on those examples instead of creating some sort of bizarre hypothetical narrative to argue his point. I find it's always telling when an argument is based on hypotheticals or "thought experiments". It generally means that the author had to literally make stuff out of thin air to argue their point. It's antiscientific at best and disingenuous at worst.
- nyolfen 7y agohe isn't making it up, this happened most famously in paris but also in many other places
- Nav_Panel 7y ago> we still strain credulity to think of a public welfare project where "the state" whimsically decides to "plow through what they can" and rebuild "based on a grid."... they just "decide," "while they're at it," to rezone The reason this is so incredulous is that it used to happen all the time, at least based on Caro's book "The Power Broker" about Robert Moses. Randomly tearing down neighborhoods to build highways, housing projects, etc. In my hometown of Albany, two neighborhoods were entirely torn down in the 70s to build the massive "Rockefeller Plaza." The only reason planners no longer do this is that the outrage was so immense in the wake of people like Moses. But it's not "unfathomable", it's history.
- simonsarris 7y agoYes, also Syracuse NY, 1955 vs present: https://archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Syracuse-Birds-Eye_After-1024x0-c-default.jpg https://archpaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Syracuse-Bi...
- simonsarris 7y ago> Unlikely to the point of making one angry. It shocks the intellect. I am sincere when I say you need to read considerably more history. You could start with Seeing Like a State, the book this article is reviewing, since it contains many examples that would, apparently, shock your intellect. Many of the schemes tried in history are certainly shocking. If you want to flip through Wikipedia instead I would suggest looking into the works or deeds of Le Corbusier, Earl Butz(! maybe the man solely responsible for massive scale farms in the USA), Robert McNamara, Robert Moses, Jean Monnet, the Shah of Iran, David Lilienthal, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Julius Nyerere, and for examples of re-ordering existing neighborhoods especially the work of Moses, but also Haussmann's renovation of Paris, and Le Corbusier's proposed (but never enacted) remaking of Paris center. Maybe also read about Oscar Niemeyer and the making of Brasilia. Or, if you want a US centric look try The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where Jane Jacobs details lots of things that happened in the USA that you may term "unlikely." > we have to assume, as I'll do, a first-world democracy It's not clear why you'd have to assume this. The book covers societies in very different times, across continents, but certainly includes first-world democracies, as well as forced villagizationin in Ethiopia, forced standards conversion in medieval France, the rise of grids in many countries, and so on.