If you're in the business of designing environments people will pay money to live in, you can't design your idea of utopia and force everyone to conform to it, writes Virginia Postrel.
"The seeming homogeneity of master-planned communities -- the planning that gives them a bad name among intellectuals -- turns out to be real-world pluralism once you realize that everyone doesn't have to live within the same design boundaries. Community designs and governance structures are continuously evolving, offering new models to compete with the old. This pluralist approach may overturn technocratic notions of how city planning should work, but its the way towns are in fact developing in the United States, suggesting that these institutions offer real benefits to residents... A dynamic model of city life recognizes that not just purposes or technologies change over time. So do tastes."
Thanks to ArchNewsNow.com
FULL STORY: Designing Rules
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