In Which Life is not SimCity: Washington Square and the Austrian Connection

Good morning, dear friend! Here I return with some more thoughts and ideas about urban planning and so on. I tend to avoid writing so much all at once, but it cannot be helped as I had this idea in mind, I would love to share! Of course, I want first to ask how are you, how are things? As for me, I am a bit fatigued, but not too bad. I pray and hope today can be productive, I want to make some effort and go deliver some documents at the school and hopefully I may find if I can have an internship or not. The weather is miserable, summer ends with a strong and unbearable moist heat, the worst kind. Hope you are havinf a better temperature time today. With that being said, would love to explore this thought I had, as follows:

I think I could have mentioned before, I am reading this excellent book by the writer Jane Jacobs, Death and Life of Great American Cities, and it got me thinking that simulation games have really little to do with real life, have they? I say this as a person that loves and lives to play city building ganes, you know I mention Anno from time to time. I have not played SimCity much, true, but I did write in defense of that one, and I am so happy I did it. As a game, it is almost verossimil to real life. It is not, though. Imagine, as the great planner Robert Moses wanted a highway going through the charming and pictoresque neighborhood of Greenwich Village. When written, in the late 50's, it seemed like the most pleasant place in New York, or at least that is hoe Jane writes about it, that is how I imagine. Not sure how it is now, New York has changed, and not for the best, but in any case, Mr. Moses wanted to sever the heart of Greenwich Village, the most pleasant Washigton Square Park.

On a city builder, that would be the end of the story, and it would not be a story at all, even, just a small anecdote on the grand scheme of the game, and if you mention the horrid City Skylines, that would ever more be the case. The park would be bulldoze for all the planner would care, the houses would be, like clay, put on water to dissolve, the numbers would just disperse. Catherine II said "You intellectuals are Lucky beings, you work with paper, that is ever forgiving, accepts your whims. I, poor Empress that I am, work with human souls, and those do not take it as gently". I think of Catherine because she was much more wise than Mr. Moses. SimCity is a paradise for orthodox urban planners, but real life is not one of those sims. Thank God for that! In the real world, people, and that includes our friend, Mrs. Jacobs, were absolutely disgusted by the idea of losing their beloved strolling area to concrete and asphalt, and made their voices be heard through the correct mechanisms of civil society, with petitions and networks, the good weapons a healthy middle class, either that be poor or rich, should use, in order to not let their lives be affected by a horrid highway. Real life is not SimCity, Washington Square was spared, Jacobs cemented herself as an effective writer and doer, and I hope today Greenwich is as lovely as it was back when Jane wrote her book.

Fun how it goes thst truth is real, inconvenient to some, saving to all the rest of us. I say this because the truth that life is messy (thank God for that) and you cannot plan your way towards utopia (thank God plus one) united three people on a similar page, without theu needing to even be on the same topic of interest, or even interacting with one another: Hayek, illustrious alumn of the greaf Mises, Mrs. Jacobs, called "the radical conservative" by her book editor, in one of the editions of Death and Life, and Margaret Thatcher, the irreductible lady that proved to be the last Hurrah of Brittania, and that gave that United Kingdom several decades of relative rosy prosperity, specially in comparison to the awful 1970's. You know how good one's ideas actually are by their fruits, and even if Jane was not exactly aware of the depths of Austrian Thinking, she made me see Hayek much better, and to appreciate him even more. 

This is what I had to bring about today. And I am very happy I did. I had something more derived from the Chesterton rhetoric in mind, but thr post could have gotten a bit hard to follow and to write, maybe in another point. Just relieved I still find ideas to write about. Sometimes I feel sterile of those sparks. In any case, I am wrapping it up here, but I should return soon, real soon, I hope. I think before the weekend, we will see, until then, happy Monday, have a lovely week! Wish you the best!