Because crime is an ineradicable phenomenon common to all societies, it must be that case that experienced city planners recognize that it is impossible to design a city without incorporating a number of high crime areas. It stands to reason, in fact, that a very intelligent city planner will deliberately construct areas which are favorable to criminals, though he may try to place them away from major residential and business districts.
However, his attempts even in this direction can only expect to have limited success. One cannot have a prosperous business community without at least a back door to crime. The line between honest and dishonest business practices cannot be made rigid. Wherever this is done the economy suffers.
Other example of this basic principle come to mind. Thus, all societies set up barriers to the performance of sexual intercourse. Yet without such activity there can be no procreation , and without procreation there can be no society! Consequently every society is obliged to provide practical venues for sexual liaisons and sexual activity, most of which would be officially, ( or even legally), described as illegitimate.
These are the exemplifying paradigms for all situations that arise in urban design in which, under the pressure of necessity, space is needed be for the pursuit of illegal activities. Such paradigms can never be advocated in schools of architecture, nor promoted in grant applications or contracts. However any city planner who does not, directly or indirectly, take cognizance of such self-evident realities, can never succeed at his profession: either he will never be awarded contracts, or he will create environments that are , through their lack of functionality, unliveable.
Given that a deep cut into but a single finger pre-occupies all of us more than the collective suffering of the whole human race, it is obvious that the application of the concept of 'democracy' can never be more than a weak approximation: how can one hope that anyone will seriously impair his or her own well-being in favor of a majority of millions of souls , if the sum total of their joys and sorrows cannot rise above the level of an abstraction?
There are however 3 ways in which human beings try to transcend this virtually insurmountable barrier: sympathy, empathy and vision.
Still, the pain I feel at the contemplation of the amputation of the arm of a good friend cannot begin to compare to what I would feel if my own arm were amputated!
Indeed, many religions maintain that the entire purpose of life on earth as a fragmented and alienated human being, is to reduce, even eliminate, that alienation through sympathy, empathy and vision.
Walking across the bridge over the Duck Pond in Boston Common, I passed a crowd of young Hispanic women, all gorgeously attired and some of them with boy-friends. Overhearing their conversations revealed that they'd just come from a graduation from a local Catholic high school and were out celebrating.
I passed them and continued across the bridge, reflecting:
Education is a fraud! Graduations are frauds! Religions are frauds! Nationalities are frauds! Romance is a fraud!
Everything is a fraud!!
Regarding the satin-blue tulips swaying in the breeze in a plot to my left, I thought:
- Tulips are nice.