nicknicknicknick reviewed Critical Mass by Philip Ball
Review of 'Critical Mass' on Goodreads
3 stars
''The U.S. economist Herbert Simon points out that an absence of central planning does not necessarily mean that all cities are poorly 'designed.' On the contrary, they are (or at any rate, they once were) often remarkably effective in arranging for goods to be transported, for land to be apportioned between residential, business, and manufacturing districts, and for a lot of activity to be fitted into a small area: 'I retain vivid memories of the astonishment and disbelief expressed by the architecture students to whom I taught urban land economics many years ago when I pointed to medieval cities as marvelously patterned systems that had mostly just 'grown' in response to myriads of individual human decisions. To my students a pattern implied a planner in whose mind it had been conceived and by whose hand it had been implemented. The idea that a city could acquire its pattern as …
''The U.S. economist Herbert Simon points out that an absence of central planning does not necessarily mean that all cities are poorly 'designed.' On the contrary, they are (or at any rate, they once were) often remarkably effective in arranging for goods to be transported, for land to be apportioned between residential, business, and manufacturing districts, and for a lot of activity to be fitted into a small area: 'I retain vivid memories of the astonishment and disbelief expressed by the architecture students to whom I taught urban land economics many years ago when I pointed to medieval cities as marvelously patterned systems that had mostly just 'grown' in response to myriads of individual human decisions. To my students a pattern implied a planner in whose mind it had been conceived and by whose hand it had been implemented. The idea that a city could acquire its pattern as naturally as a snowflake was foreign to them. They reacted to it as many Christian fundamentalists responded to Darwin: no design without a Designer!'''
