Smiling Gods Looking Down from the Sky

"One sees in the newspapers photographs from beaming city officials and architects looking down on the successful model as if they were in helicopters, or gods. What is astounding, from a vernacular perspective, is that no one ever experiences the city from that height or angle. The presumptive ground-level experience of real pedestrians -- window-shoppers, errand-runners, aimlessly strolling lovers -- is left entirely urban-planning equation." -- James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism, p. 44

A photo from when my campus was being designed -- that's Nelson Rockefeller who is second from the left:

Here is the campus the way the designer saw it:

Lovely from way up there, isn't it? Too bad that's not where we hold class.