Comment 69346

By mahesh_P_Butani (registered) - website | Posted September 10, 2011 at 06:28:29 in reply to Comment 69343

The farmer in west of Sheffield, may not have anything in common with the urbanites of downtown Hamilton, and may go for gas and supplies to Cambridge, because it is closer than downtown Hamilton - but which port would his produce go to, if there is a sudden demand spike in the world food chain for his output that could get him high returns? or which medical centre would he prefer being rushed to, if he developed a serious heart condition?

When one revisit a divisive debate that has been put to rest, and once again ask for the bread to be cut into little pieces - not only does every one go hungry from eating little morsels - but one also begin with a faulty premise and reach absurd conclusions. A better premise could be to find ways to bake a larger bread.

If the intent here is to open up a new fault line in the city among people who are just recovering from the ill-framed WH/LRT debate, just for a buzz - it is one of the most cynical moves in recent times. If this is payback for the supposed lost WH/LRT causes - it is a very dangerous play with serious consequences.

Hamilton urgently needs to get on with the task of economy rebuilding with a positive frame of mind, as a whole - and does not need another round of armchair quarterbacking with a re-manufactured trauma - this time of ward boundary re-definitions with allusions to deep geographic knowledge.

Using yet another 'expert' to prop this latest venture to divide the city - will only continue the downward spiral of public discourse in Hamilton, and delay its economic growth.

Such thinking is the natural outcome of taking a software development approach and literally transposing it onto urbanism -- where every 'expertise' such as David Rusk the most recent find, or Richard Florida, Howard Kunstler and Jane Jacobs from earlier on -- are treated as an application programming interface (API):

4.3 "...that allows you to take advantage of the expertise without necessarily knowing everything about the internals"...

The benefits of being a 'non-expert' on planning, economy or politics -- is also neatly built into this bizarre construct:

"...If not for this ability for non-experts to access expertise, there would be no way for the benefits of that expertise to disseminate into the broader society and inform our policy decisions."

Such loose thinking - 4.2, coupled with partisan politics has sown confusion and polarization among Hamiltonians for many years - who by now cannot tell the forest from the trees as new 'experts' are paraded to validate more untenable positions.

One simply cannot build a stable private world with such dubious constructs - let alone attempt to build a democratic urban world that can withstand scrutiny.

It is such inane constructs which have a much larger capacity to damage society permanently via its inherent lack of knowing the 'internals' - while blindly misapplying 'experts' ideas to generate buzz and lobby personal or political agendas, which uninitiated readers consume and spread further like wild-fire.

Knowledge itself is the victim in this. There is no room left for a Knowledge Economy to spring from such absurdities.

Such contrived constructs are a far cry from Biophilia and Biourbanism which has at its heart a sentience for the rich diversity of all life forms on earth and its interconnectedness to the universe - and where all life forms equally are deeply valued as expert 'peers', and not selectively chosen as expert API's to develop self-referential constructs.

The rest is about merely tinkering around with data - whether open or shut, to build more inane constructs without having a clue of the deeper 'internals' that rejuvenate and sustain complex relationships among life forms.

Mahesh P. Butani

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