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Funny, I just started reading Cato's "The Power Broker" a couple weeks ago. Before that point, I had absolutely no idea who Robert Moses was. I picked that bo

Funny, I just started reading Cato's "The Power Broker" a couple weeks ago. Before that point, I had absolutely no idea who Robert Moses was. I picked that book at random, but as "happy little accidents" go, it melded with my current exploration of themes related to urban planning marvelously. I particularly love reading Jane Jacobs's thoughts on the subject, who learned by observation, not through logical analysis. A lot of my interest in this area comes from a life-long appreciation of (non-pejorative) anarchist philosophical thought. It's a lot harder to build organization from the bottom-up, but top-down organization loses so much implicit knowledge and context that it seems reasonable to investigate the former approach. I'll check out your newsletter, it seems so interesting, thank you for linking. :)

wonder_er 6y ago
That book is one of the best books I have ever read. criminally undervalued for people trying to understand why the world is the way that it is. I talk extensively about Robert Moses in my newsletter, but as you might imagine it's hard to summarize a 1400 page book in a handful of emails, so I haven't quite figured out exactly how well the looping Robert Moses's story into the greater narrative I'm trying to convey. I would love your thoughts on the newsletter as you read through it! I just started rereading Jane jacobs's "the death and life of great American cities" I'm sure at some point I'll be looping it into the newsletter as well. I'm with you on the non pejorative anarchist philosophical thought. Not necessarily anything to do with anarchy, but more about the value generation of spontaneous, self-organized, responsive, iterative, goal-seeking behavior at an individual level. Have you heard of "The problem of political authority: the right course and the duty to obey" or "seeing like a state: why schemes to improve the human condition fail" as if you're reading list isn't already long enough, these might be worthwhile additions.

wonder_er 6y ago

That book is one of the best books I have ever read. criminally undervalued for people trying to understand why the world is the way that it is. I talk extensively about Robert Moses in my newsletter, but as you might imagine it's hard to summarize a 1400 page book in a handful of emails, so I haven't quite figured out exactly how well the looping Robert Moses's story into the greater narrative I'm trying to convey. I would love your thoughts on the newsletter as you read through it! I just started rereading Jane jacobs's "the death and life of great American cities" I'm sure at some point I'll be looping it into the newsletter as well. I'm with you on the non pejorative anarchist philosophical thought. Not necessarily anything to do with anarchy, but more about the value generation of spontaneous, self-organized, responsive, iterative, goal-seeking behavior at an individual level. Have you heard of "The problem of political authority: the right course and the duty to obey" or "seeing like a state: why schemes to improve the human condition fail" as if you're reading list isn't already long enough, these might be worthwhile additions.