This week’s NY Times Magazine has a fascinating article about cities through the eyes of Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute. West is no ordinary physicist. He has contributed to work on scaling laws in biology, the subject of this talk he gave at Google 3 in 2007 and now he is trying to figure out how city growth affects society and environment. A taste:
For West, the impermanence of the corporation illuminates the real strength of the metropolis.Unlike companies, which are managed in a top-down fashion by a team of highly paid executives, cities are unruly places, largely immune to the desires of politicians and planners.
“Think about how powerless a mayor is,” West says. “They can’t tell people where to live or what to do or who to talk to. Cities can’t be managed, and that’s what keeps them so vibrant.They’re just these insane masses of people, bumping into each other and maybe sharing an idea or two. It’s the freedom of the city that keeps it alive.”
As It Is In Eden 