One of the podcasts I’ve been enjoying as of late its Tim Harford’s Pop Up Ideas from the BBC. In the latest episode David Kilcullen talks about feral cities (direct MP3 link), which essentially flip the idea of the failed state on its head, suggesting that it’s not the state that fails the city, but rather the city that fails the state (the podcast has a deeper explanation). Here’s a bit more from a short New York Times piece on the idea from a few years ago:
Richard Norton, a Naval War College scholar who has developed a taxonomy of what he calls feral cities, says that there are numerous places slipping toward Mogadishu, perhaps the only fully feral city nowadays. As public services disintegrate, residents are forced to hire private security or pay criminals for protection. The police in Brazil have fallen back on a containment policy against gangs ruling the favelas, while the rich try to stay above the fray, fueling the busiest civilian helicopter traffic in the world (there are 240 helipads in S-o Paulo; there are 10 in New York City). In Johannesburg, much of downtown, including the stock exchange, has been abandoned to squatters and drug gangs. In Mexico City, crime is soaring despite the presence of 91,000 policemen. Karachi, Pakistan, where 40 percent of the population lives in slums, plays host to gangland violence and to Al Qaeda cells.
July 27, 2013 // This post is about: africa, cities, city, David Kilcullen, feral cities, Mogadishu, Social Sciences
Just got back from a few days in London and there were two random thoughts I’ve wanted to share. Neither are new, but they popped into my head during this trip and I thought, “maybe I should blog about those,” so here we are.
Thing # 1: We all know they drive on the left side of the road in the UK. This isn’t surprising anymore. What is surprising, to me at least, is every time you encounter a situation where pedestrian traffic is routed to the right. For instance, on all the escalators in the tubes it tells you to stand to the right and pass on the left. This is what we do in the US which makes it seem very wrong in the UK. Also, when you walk the streets in New York it’s a fairly standard rule that traffic stays right. In the UK I feel like you constantly see people on both sides of the sidewalk walking both directions. All of this makes me think that people naturally want to stay to the right (probably because most are right-handed). I have no idea whether this is true or not (I’m also not sure whether British folks will find this offensive, in which case I apologize). I just think you’ve got to pick one and stick to it. You wouldn’t find a random escalator or walkway in a high-traffic zone in the US where there are signs directing traffic to stay left.
Thing # 2: One of the things I really like about London is how much ground floor commercial space there is. In New York City the ground floor is almost entirely retail and office work happens somewhere between the 2nd and 100th floor. I’m not sure why I like looking in at people working, but there’s something really interesting about walking past an office window during the day. It’s just not a view you really get in New York. (I’d say this has something to do with the fact that we’re looking for a new office so I’m especially keen to see how other’s deal with their space, but this has fascinated me since well before I started a company.)
Alright, that’s it. Two very random observations.
December 15, 2012 // This post is about: cities, london, transportation
