Monday, March 05, 2007
 
The Men Who Would Be Demigods
Lileks today takes issue with urban designers:
    What really caught my eye was an interview with a University of Minnesota professor named Thomas Fisher, the dean of the U's new School of Design. It was a conversation about the new Design Economy, a term I hadn't heard before. America will compete and thrive because we design good things, like the iPod. You might wonder how a nation of 300 million can be sustained by design, but rest assured the term has broader definitions. The interview, called "Intelligent Design," focused on cities. As you might expect they are in dire need of Design, and I suspect this design will be administrated by experts. (As Dr. Johnson once said: A man who has tired of criticizing London is tired of tenure.) In order to compete, our cities need better design. No argument here - until we look at the specifics.
Wouldn't it be neat if we could get all of these government planners together and buy them copies of SimCity and let them go at that for their tax-money squandering fun as they tried to one-up each other?

No, probably not, because design and aesthetics and micromanaging Cits is only one component of their self-aggodizement. The other is enriching themselves and their unelected Elect.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:06 PM
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