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Reflections from Order Without Design by Alain Bertaud. Thread 
Main takeaway: planners are like medieval doctors trying to leech out bad humours rather than working off of causal models with predictive power. This book introduces the start of "modern medicine" for cities
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On the cycle of gentrification and degentrification in Beijing's hutongs:pic.twitter.com/hQPYYkkyB0
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"The structure of South African apartheid cities was the reverse of urban spatial structures generated by markets." Then, the public housing program meant to correct this injustice reinforced the deficient inherited spatial structure...pic.twitter.com/RJ2A1RDqLt
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Restrictive urban regulations are like hard drugs for cities: "Trying to suddenly remove their drug fix create severe side effects, because their organism is used to the drug and needs it, even as they are being destroyed by it."pic.twitter.com/02QGfrx1OR
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How are cities different from designed objects like bridges, washing machines, and phones? When a designed object becomes obsolete, it is discarded. By contrast, cities must survive, even (and especially) when tossed around by external shocks.pic.twitter.com/CVAk067oeS
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Paris regulates the altitude of buildings *from sea level* (rather than the typical building height measured from the ground floor) in order to protect the perspective view of landmarks like the Eiffel Tower!
pic.twitter.com/UeAOoSQEX5
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The elephant in the room is that if population growth is only up, eventually you run out of space no matter how you plan.
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Earth is is *extremely* large. And the universe is even larger. We can figure something out.
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In Elon we trust then. Not sure that’s a rock solid plan but ok!
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To be clear, I also think that even with limited space humans can and do figure things out. Malthus was (mostly) wrong. And population growth is slowing, to boot. So with all three considerations in mind, I'm really not concerned about this.
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Time will tell.
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