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Andreas Praefcke - wikipedia commons
A Long History of a Short Block - Lessons in the Futility of Top Down Planning
Business Insider reports that Tim Hartford of the Financial Times has done an interesting study about the evolution of development on one small block in downtown Manhattan, Greene Street in SOHO. It's a street I have some affection for because it was the location of the first architectural firm where I had an associates job, when I graduated from college - top floor, vast open loft space, not much heat.
Hartford studied the history of the street from the 1850's to present, looking at the changes in land and building use, and the types of residents and shops.
His conclusions? "Getting the basic infrastructure right - streets, water, sanitation, policing, etc. - is a good idea. Aggressive planning, knocking down entire blocks in response to temporary [economic] weakness, is probably not. Predicting the process of economic development at a local level is a game for suckers."
This reflective investigation strikes a chord in many of us and confirms our intuitive sense that all the talk of Planned Development Areas, Transit Priority Projects, grandeous social engineering experiments to counteract unintended consequences called "disparate impacts," and other such top down thinking is probably doomed to fail.
As they say, "Those who fail to learn from the past...."