wlp on housing
I was talking to Makrand the other day, and Sonal today and of course I ended up with more question than answers and I thought I’de put out my questions.
The first thing I wasn’t sure of was the idea of efficiency. I have always imagined efficiency as a requirement, but I have noticed that sometimes efficiency can become the ideology. When efficiency is the ideology used to design and plan space, then data becomes the language. Two things. The first: Data should be a tool, not an ideology. Secondly: I am not fluent in the language of data, how then do I speak, and how would one create, read and use data?
The efficiency model has time and again been broken because efficiency itself is an extremely gendered/ biased/ directional planning method.
What models of efficiency are we meant to consider when thinking about housing? How is the idea of efficiency countered by image/aspiration/power when cities are formed. How has the model of planned efficiency been resisted through the means of citizens groups, housing societies, politicians and the media and consequent aspirations?
But my most important question: How do we as researchers counter data? I drown when people throw data at me.
wlp on form
I opine that form can be generated over time. Let us speak and we will be forced to resolve form. I think that the form needs to be really simple, it needs to be constructed such that many people can speak given that they are not able to devote too much time to talking every week.
The form needs to be able to amalgamate many people into its fold without too much managerial work. People should be able to speak within the space that we created without asking us. And then if we see relevance in their opinion, we can include them into our fold. The form needs to be structured so it can change and grow with time. In time it needs to make money.
The most essential thing is that the form should take into account our schedules. Otherwise nothing will work.
The only other thing is that it needs a hard copy archive. I think we know enough software, and can learn what we don’t know, to begin an archive.
This is a brief text on some things that i think are essential. Don't want to say too much. More later.
Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
some links about and around socialism
I'm sorry i'm putting this up as a post, it should be a comment to prasad's post. the problem is that the links leep wrapping so they don't work.
I have put together a very quick list of blog entries and articles that I found dealing with socialism. I ran a google search on some blogs that i frequent and I found some articles. This list isn’t the best I’ve seen but it’s the tip of an iceberg that I’m sure you will encounter while browsing.
Walter Williams writes 'socialism is evil' he makes the argument that socialism amounts to legal theft.
Ravikiran crtiques some rhetorical defenses that he hears about Nehru on Anarcaplib over here.
Yazad, on AnarCap Lib quotes Leon Leuw who says socialism is the best strategy to create poverty.
This is the last link. Don Bodreaux at Cafe Hayek hopes that price regulation is not used to tide over the disaster of the tsunamis in sri lanka and indonesia.
I also wanted to add the swaminomics article about nehruvian socialism told through Tata and Mittal, 'Putting Nehru, Tata to Shame'
Here are some more blogs that although i haven't reffered to, usually say interesting things:
The Examined Life
Varnam
Samizdata.net
